


Happy Lights

by ladyshadowdrake



Series: Happy Lights [1]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Awesome Phil Coulson, Dubious Consentacles, Friendly alien, Humor, IT'S SO FLUFFY, M/M, Other, Plot Propelling Smut, Weirdness, the consent is not actually very dubious
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-19
Updated: 2017-04-03
Packaged: 2018-02-26 05:41:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 33,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2640152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladyshadowdrake/pseuds/ladyshadowdrake
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An interdimensional portal opens over New York and drops a tentacled alien in the middle of Central Park. The Avengers are called out to investigate, and hopefully return the visitor home. Steve has been brushing up on his diplomacy, but he never expected to be a liaison to an alien in such an intimate capacity, or that the alien would be so friendly, and the unusual visit turns into the world's best team-building exercise.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [copperbadge](https://archiveofourown.org/users/copperbadge/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Kiss The Sky](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1268941) by [copperbadge](https://archiveofourown.org/users/copperbadge/pseuds/copperbadge). 



> This has been edited and updated! If you've read the story before, and are confused about things looking new - that's because they are! Many thanks to Arukou and Sweetsaltygingerbitch over on Tumblr for the beta'ing
> 
> Warnings for tentacles/tentacle sex, kinda/sort bondage, and also for multiple partners. The consent is not as dubious as the dubious tag usually likes, but we're going to run with it.

Chapter One

 

Steve woke well before his alarm was set to go off. He didn’t bother turning his phone over to check the time, just listened to the _tick-tick-tick-tick_ of the clock on the wall. Tony had called him a dinosaur when he’d brought it home from the antique shop. No one put a clock on the wall because they actually needed to know the time, he’d insisted (why have a phone otherwise?). Clocks were for interior decoration only, and it was best when they didn’t even work. Steve had seen the clock in the window of the antique shop and it had reminded him of his mother. She had dragged her clock around for years, from one shitty tenement to another. Her grandfather had brought the simple timepiece with them from Ireland, taking up the precious little space he had for personal items on the ship.

Steve had gone to sleep to that clock for years, first tucked into a drawer lined with blankets, and later in the single bed that he got at night and his mom got during the day. It had kept him company during the long nights while his mom was working at the hospital, had provided soothing background noise while Steve sat on the floor with his slate and a snub of chalk, meticulously practicing his letters. She had been forced to sell or trade away everything else – the tea service her mother had been so proud of, her great grandmother’s wedding dress, her jewelry – but the clock had stayed on the wall, _tick-tick-tick-tick_ through every storm, every stifling hot summer night, every breathing fit, every sickness. It wasn’t until after his mom’s death that Steve had been forced to give up the clock to pay for her grave.

He’d stood in front of the antique shop’s window for several minutes, staring at the simple wooden panels and the tarnished brass plate on the front, the elegant shape of the hands, the careful formation of the numbers and thought about his mother’s grave in the pauper’s field, and Bucky standing next to him in the rain, and how he’d had trouble falling asleep for months afterwards without the steady _tick-tick-tick-tick_ in the background.

Even after teasing him about it, Tony had helped him repair the clock and Natasha had helped him hang it so it was centered and level on the wall. He had thought that it would be easier to go to sleep to its gentle ticking, but it had kept him awake for hours every night for weeks. In the darkness, the ticking was no longer gentle but as loud as hammer blows on the wall. It wasn’t quite right, the _tick_ just a little too long, the tone not striking the same note. He’d thought about throwing it away, about telling Tony that he was right – he didn’t need a clock to tell him the time, he had a very intelligent phone for that – but Steve didn’t give up, and it had somehow become a matter of honor for him.

It had taken months, but the clock had finally stopped reminding him of the way the rain sounded on grave markers. Somewhere beyond the sleepless nights it had started reminding him of the way his mom had crawled into the bed in the early hours of the morning, moving him carefully so he didn’t wake up, and laying down with her hand over his chest as she drifted off to sleep.

The alarm went off. The musical ringtone was jarring after the _tick-tick-tick-tick_ of the antique clock. Steve winced, but he let the sound continue for several seconds before dragging his phone off the end table and canceling the alarm. The ticking of the clock swelled in the resulting silence, and Steve counted out fifty-five blows of the hammer, and then swung his legs over the side of the bed and forced himself to get up.

He took a long run through the park, and waved at a flagpole on the way past, his lips jerking into a smile. As much as being in the right place at the right time, as much as jumping on a grenade, that flagpole had changed his life. Peggy’s carefully repressed smile had been almost as good as a full breath when he’d climbed into the back of her jeep. He’d wanted to talk to her, and spent the entire ride thinking of clever things he could say, comic book one-liners and movie quotes, but it took the entire trip back to base to just get his breath under control. By the time he felt calm enough to speak, the jeep had pulled up to the admin building, and Peggy climbed out of the front seat with a polite smile, and a terse, “Good job, Rogers.”

“This looks like a job for Superman,” Steve muttered under his breath as he left the flag behind him, shaking his head. Peggy would have loved it, though he wouldn’t have known at the time. She had kept herself shielded around the recruits, and even Steve had only seen glimmers of what must have been beneath her shell. More than anything, he regretted not getting the chance to know her better, to know what she was like out of uniform and off the battlefield.

Back at the tower, he found Nat already at the stove. He’d been surprised the first time he’d walked into the kitchen and found her putting away a lumberjack’s breakfast, but after a few times joining her for a workout, he’d understood where she put the calories.

“Morning, Steve,” she said over her shoulder, flipping a pancake in the griddle. It landed with a soft _plop_ and immediate started to puff up, perfectly golden on one side and pale on the edge. She twisted around to give him a smile. “Pancakes?”

“As many as you can fit on a plate,” Steve answered, pulling the bag of potatoes out of the pantry. They worked side-by-side in companionable silence, moving around each other with practiced ease. Steve washed and peeled potatoes and chopped them into tiny neat squares while Natasha scooped pancakes off the griddle by the half dozen.

Between the two of them, they ended up with giant stacks of golden pancakes, corned beef hash mixed with bacon, scrambled eggs smothered in cheese, and cups of yogurt.

“You two disgust me,” Tony said when he stumbled half-asleep into the kitchen, and then left with his face in a coffee mug, and a bag of cookies stuffed under his arm.

“You don’t disgust me,” Clint reassured them, just as sleepy, grabbing a plate and scooping out piles of breakfast for himself.

“You’re doing the dishes,” Nat said, pointing at his plate with her fork as he sat down.

Clint flopped his hand vaguely in her direction. “Yeah, yeah,” he muttered drowsily and tucked into his stolen breakfast.

Steve cleared his plate, leaned over to kiss Nat’s temple, and said, “Thanks for pancakes.”

“How come I don’t get a kiss?” Clint demanded. He had his mouth full of eggs and potatoes, and his expression was adorably confused. His hair was crushed to his skull on one side and raked up into a mess of spikes and tangles on the other, and his eyes were still only half open.

Steve thought about kissing Clint’s forehead, but he would probably never hear the end of it if he did. “Because you don’t make me pancakes,” he said, rinsing his plate and forcing himself to put it in the sink instead of loading it in the dishwasher himself. Nat’s rule was very firm: the chefs didn’t clean, and the penalty was just as strict for the chefs as the non-chefs if her rule was broken. She gave him a satisfied nod and a smile from behind her glass of orange juice.

~*~

The weights chimed with each repetition, _cl-clink, cl-clink, cl-clink_ , just a bare ping of noise under his music. Steve tried to remember not to let the weights touch, but he liked the way they chimed like a clock. It was an auditory anchor that helped him remember where he was – or more importantly _when_ he was. He had earbuds pressed into his ear canals, soft white doughnuts of rubber connected to a wafer of hard plastics and wires. It played Ella Fitzgerald, Glenn Miller, and Bing Crosby interspersed with Adele, Pink, and Bruno Mars. It was still amazing to him that he could carry so much music around in his _pocket_ , but he had to admit that he missed the community aspect of music from his time. There were a few radios in his building when he was at art school, and sometimes they would be set out in the hall so everyone could enjoy the music. Music back then hadn’t been something to enjoy alone, but with friends or neighbors, or total strangers briefly connected by the melody.

Bucky would’ve loved modern dance music. He’d always liked the loud tunes with the fast beats, and he would have fit right into a 21st Century dance club. Bucky had been proud of his dancing, and he might have mourned the loss of the specific dance steps, but Steve didn’t think he’d’ve minded the new dancing either, with his body pressed so tight to a lady’s he might as well have been in bed with her. Steve tried to imagine himself standing at the bar in one of those noisy clubs and watching Bucky sway with a girl or three. He didn’t think he could’ve done it, not like the dance halls of their youth when Steve could watch Bucky’s feet kicking up the latest steps instead of his hips gyrating to the beat.

Maybe, if they’d been born into the right century and Steve had come by his body honestly, he could have been out in the crowd with Bucky, back-to-back as they danced with strangers, or maybe they would have danced together. The thought made him flush in embarrassment and hint of shame, and the weights smacked together, off beat with _Moves like Jagger_. He let go of the handles and wrapped his hands around the back of his neck as he straightened his legs out again, feeling the subtle burn in his thighs and abdomen.

Steve tried to imagine himself on the dance floor with Peggy and couldn’t quite bridge that gap either. It was easy to picture wrestling with her on the mats, even sparring with her in the ring, but the idea of that kind of hip grinding exhibitionism always made his knees feel weak. The back of his neck warmed up under his fingers, and he let the weights chime back together. He moved the pin down to the bottom, putting him at a level that required genuine effort. It was a special machine that Tony had designed for him a year before and kept adding extra weight to whenever he got into a tinkering mood. The heavy weight dragged his mind of off Peggy, but reminded him that Tony was an excellent dancer.

Adele’s _Best for Last_ came on, and Steve turned his attention to counting. Some modern music was a horror to him, but he liked the diversity and the depth of the sounds, the beats and the excitement, and that Adele had some pipes on her. His mom would have loved her music. He kept a running count – 18, 19, 20 – remembering to breathe, extend his legs fully in front of him, pull them slowly back, 21, 22, 23.

The music cut with an abrupt _bing!_ Followed by his phone’s pleasant voice announcing, “Priority alert, emergency notification from SHIELD.”

Steve curled his legs in, letting the weights come to rest with a final _k-ching!_ Tugging the earbuds out by the cord, he fished his phone out of his pocket. Steve hastily wiped his hand off on his thigh and pressed his right thumb to the flashing red exclamation mark in the center of his screen. It flashed his fingerprint briefly on the screen, and then an emergency alert came up from Coulson. There were no words, just a minute and twenty-two second video clip. Frowning, he used his pinkie to push the play button.

He let the video play through, and then stared at the last frame still frozen on the screen for several seconds. If it had been anyone other than Coulson, he would have thought it was a horrible joke. After Tony had convinced him that Jurassic Park was based on a true story, and the rest of the team had let him rant about the irresponsibility of it for a week, he was suspicious of almost everything. Bruce had finally filled him in on the prank minutes before Steve had gone on a talk show, where he probably would have mentioned it. He’d felt stupid for believing it, but then again, space aliens invading through an interdimensional portal, and a thunder god. Not much really registered on the incredulity meter after that.

Swiping the video out of the way, he got back to the home screen and tapped on the giant red and blue icon that read _Avengers Assemble!_ In cartoon text. (It _was_ a cartoon. Clint enjoyed it, so it played frequently in the common area). His screen flashed blue and then a tiny box with his own face staring down at an unflattering angle popped up in the corner. A year ago, he would have jumped right out of the exercise machine and started shouting orders, but he wasn’t in the War anymore, and running around shouting usually just got him into a fight with Tony and made Bruce nervous.

“Hold it up high, Cap, selfie angle,” Tony coached, his own little box coming up in the opposite corner. Steve could just make out the workshop behind him. From the angle of the camera, Dum-E or Jarvis was recording for him.

Steve ignored Tony’s selfie advice and got himself out of the leg extension machine, heading for the locker room at a jog. “I need everyone in the jet, on the double.”

“Already on the way,” Clint said. His box was black and his voice was muffled, phone probably still in his pocket.

“Does everyone mean me?” Bruce asked nervously, holding his phone up in front of his face.

When he could, he tried to leave Bruce behind for technical support. Being in the field made Bruce nervous at the best of times, and a nervous Bruce Banner made everyone else nervous. “Sorry, Doctor Banner. I think we might need you on this one.”

“Me, or the Other Guy?” Bruce asked for clarity, his voice a cross between resigned and suspicious.

“Can’t tell,” Steve answered. He set the phone down on the bench and pulled his uniform out of its cubby. He wished he had time to shower, but he hadn’t gotten the impression that Coulson was willing to wait for him to de-sweat.

The uniform was SHIELD’s most recent redesign. It was a one-piece suit that was supposed to be (or so they’d told him) faster to put on. It was worse than his old USO get-up: just as tight, but made of a thickly woven ballistic fabric that made getting into it in a hurry a problem. He’d been assured that there was a practical reason that it had to be skin tight, but he suspected that the _practical reason_ had more to do with Captain America’s media presence than it did with battle performance. He wasn’t a stranger to being dressed up to his ‘best advantage’ and paraded for the masses, but he’d hoped that he’d reached the end of that when he’d been given his own command during the War. Apparently no one had told Twitter or Facebook.

He shucked his workout clothes as fast as he could manage without tearing them, and shoved one foot into the uniform leg. He tugged at it ineffectually with one hand while he felt in the cubby for his earpiece and shoved it into his right ear.

“-apsicle, seriously,” Tony was in the midst of complaining as Steve got the comm turned on, “We are dying with the suspense here. Way past the point of the artful dramatic pause, though I applaud the effort –”

“There are tentacles,” Steve interrupted in a rush, “In Central Park.”

A beat of silence followed. Steve used it shove his other foot in his uniform and pull it up to his hips. It bunched up uncomfortably around his knees like his tights always had until they were stretched out all the way. He shuffled his feet apart and squatted down, trying to get the crotch to settle correctly while he twisted the inseam into position.

“Did you say _tentacles?_ ” Bruce asked very hesitantly into the silence.

Before Steve could answer, Tony broke in with, “Is this an ‘octopus has escaped from the zoo and is hanging out in the Reservoir, call the Avengers for the PR’ type of situation? Because I would just as soon as sit that one out. Don’t get me wrong, I love a good tentacle as much as the next guy, but I’m kind of working here.”

Uniform up around his hips, Steve sat down to get his boots on. He paused long enough to drag the video into the group chat and let it handle the explanation for him. He wasn’t sure what else he could say about it except that _there were tentacles in Central Park_. He watched the video out of the corner of his eye as he finished lacing up his boots. It was camera-phone footage, shaky and grainy, but it showed a writhing mass of appendages that varied widely in thickness and color reaching out for running civilians. From what Steve could tell, the attempted grabs looked almost lazy, and the footage didn’t show if anyone had actually been caught.

Boots laced up, Steve pulled the top of the uniform up high enough to buckle his utility belt around his hips. He stuffed his phone in the pocket that had been designed for it, snagged the shield of its hook, and made a run for the hangar bay. The arms of the uniform slapped against his knees as he ran, the Tower’s cool, dry air pebbling his skin with goose bumps as the fine sheen of sweat dried.

“Everyone accounted for?” Steve asked, sliding around the corner and using one wall as a bumper to keep himself on track. It left a chilly brand on his skin that he rubbed at absently as he ran, the _fwapfwap_ of his uniform sleeves hitting his legs keeping pace.

“Just waiting on you,” Natasha answered.

“These are _tentacles,_ ” Clint said numbly. “Has anyone ever run into a giant tentacle monster before? Is this something that just missed the story telling round at Team Bonding Night?”

“YouTube is calling it live-action hentai. Sex Invaders From Space!” Tony announced with a snicker.

It had taken Steve almost a year to figure out when Tony was trying to bait him into asking questions he didn’t want to know the answer to, and when Tony was being serious. It had been slightly over two years, and Steve usually had a pretty good handle on Tony’s bullshit level, but he floundered while trying to come up with a response.

“Do I even want to know what hen tie is?” Steve asked cautiously as he made it into the hangar with one arm in the uniform. Tony waited for him at the base of the loading ramp in the armor, but his helmet was folded back. It was a new model, Steve noted in passing, or at least newly painted. That made thirteen new versions in the last ten months. Tony’s lips curled into a mischievous grin as Steve approached, his eyes flickering briefly over Steve’s bare chest.

Steve held a hand up to forestall his answer and amended, “Just tell me it doesn’t involve chickens.”

Tony laughed, waggled his eyebrows, and didn’t answer. He held a hand out for Steve’s shield, stepping out of the way so Steve could get onboard. Clint was twisted around in the pilot’s chair, and only waited to turn around and lift off until Steve was clear of the ramp. Steve spread his feet apart for balance and struggled to get the other uniform sleeve up over his shoulder while Tony watched him avidly.

“We really need to work on something you can get into faster,” Tony mumbled, eyes flicking over the dimensions of Steve’s body. Steve was used to having eyes on him, but somehow Tony’s eyes always made him feel… something, something other than shy embarrassment, or shame, or like he was being picked apart. His attention should have done all of those things, but it only made Steve feel prickly, like Tony’s gaze was a physical thing drifting over his body. Having a hundred percent of Tony Stark’s attention was like staring into the sun, and Steve always felt like he was going to burn up under the heat of it.

Steve cleared his throat as if he could banish the ghost of Tony’s eyes on his skin. “That would be nice,” he admitted, reaching forward to take the shield back. It had taken an unacceptable seven and a half minutes to go from the alert to the hangar, and Steve had only been half dressed by the time he’d made it to the jet. Despite SHIELD’s PR team having put the stamp of approval on Steve’s newest uniform, it would have to go, just like the three before it.

“I thought you were working on something the Other Guy couldn’t tear out of,” Bruce commented, thankfully taking Tony’s attention away while Steve secured the zipper and sealed the Velcro panel over it.

“Your other half lives for no reason other than to annoy me on that front,” Tony snarked, pointing at Bruce, and then slashing his hand through the air and turning his face away. “I don’t even want to talk about this. This is us, not talking about how much you like to be naked.”

With Tony thankfully distracted, Steve slid the shield out of his hand and moved into Bruce’s ‘Science Zone, Hands Off the Buttons, Barton’ to get an update from Coulson while Clint turned the jet toward the park. They would be on site in less than three minutes, but Coulson already had a bulleted list ready for him.

“You could just ask Reed,” Natasha suggested sweetly from the copilot’s chair.

Steve glanced up for Tony’s reaction and found him looking at her with comically wide, predictably horrified eyes. “That sounds like a terrible idea. I thought you were better at good ideas than that.”

“He _has_ managed to make a textile that stretches to any shape and size,” Bruce added, voice gently coaxing. Steve stifled a smile and wondered how long Bruce had been waiting for an opening to suggest approaching Reed.

“I am under attack from all sides,” Tony sputtered. “I feel attacked. The day will never come when I can’t out-engineer _Reed Richards_.”

“He’s already –”

“Not listening!” Tony declared. He put both gauntlets up to his ears. “Lalalala, I can’t hear you. Cap, don’t we have a briefing or something we need to be doing?”

Steve leaned around the alcove. They were already in sight of the park, but he stood up and gently tapped his phone on the main screen. It picked up Coulson’s list and displayed it, projecting a transparent picture against the windshield for Clint.

“Some kind of portal opened up over the park about twenty-five minutes ago, dropped the… creature, and closed. The alien hasn’t tried to leave the park, hasn’t done any damage, and no casualties so far that we know about,” Steve summarized. He frowned at the video, playing silently at the bottom of the list. As he watched, half of the tentacles lifted in the air, twisting around as if examining the scenery, and the other half reached out for a running teenager. When it missed, several of them stilled and ‘stared’ after her. Steve tilted his head and tried to puzzle out what seemed so off to him. “It seems very…”

“Confused?” Bruce offered.

Steve nodded. “Confused,” he agreed. “But we’re not going to take any chances. At this point, the plan is for containment. We need to get it to SHIELD HQ to figure out what it is, and where it came from.”

“And to do that we’re going to…?” Tony prompted, moving up to stand next to him. He peered at Coulson’s succinct list.

Tony could have read the paltry makings of the plan himself, but Steve gestured to the last short paragraph and answered, “SHIELD has a cargo container en route. The park should be evacuated by the time we get there, SHIELD has eyes out for any more portals. We’re going to try and herd the creature into the container and get it out of reach of civilians.” Steve had no idea how they were going to do that, but he’d gone into worse situations with less of a plan before.

“Good plan,” Tony said, patting Steve gently on the shoulder. Tony as Iron Man was as careful with his strength as Steve had to be all the time, even though Steve was one of the few who could handle his strength in the suit. He grinned, rocking back slightly. “Somehow,” he said with definite glee, “This is Richards’ fault.”

Steve let out a long sigh and didn’t answer. He didn’t know what had happened between Tony and Reed Richards to make them rivals, but it seemed like they were always in some kind of competition. Steve didn’t want to ask what the issue was and get brought into the middle of their war, so he let the comment go.

“Thor would be a nice addition right now,” Clint muttered.

“I guess the tentacle monster didn’t get our calendar reminder that Thor would be out of town until Tuesday.” Bruce had one ankle crossed over the opposite knee with a tablet braced on his leg. He tapped away at it, a small furrow forming between his eyebrows as he adjusted his glasses

“Rude,” Clint whined in response.

Steve put one hand on the back of Clint’s headrest and gave it a gentle nudge. “We can do this without him.”

“Famous last words,” Clint sing-songed in reply. “On approach,” he added before Steve could respond.

Steve felt the grind of the landing gears lock into place as the quinjet reversed thrusters in a brief hover, and then set gently down. He collected his shield from Bruce’s station and flipped it over his shoulders, letting Tony’s magnets catch onto it and heading for the loading ramp. Coulson was standing calmly at the rear of the jet, and didn’t even flinch when the ramp thumped to the ground inches from his impeccably polished shoes.

“Sitrep?” Steve asked as he stepped off the ramp. Coulson fell in step beside him, his long wool coat catching a breeze and fluttering over to brush Steve’s calves as they walked around the jet. Steve could hear Clint cursing softly over the comms and ignored him. When he rounded the jet and caught the first glimpse of their otherworldly visitor in the flesh it was all he could do to bite back a curse of his own. Natasha said something in Russian that made Clint choke on a laugh.

After a brief moment of silence, Bruce muttered, _“_ Wow.”

The tentacle creature was a mass of vibrant limbs that ran the color spectrum from sea foam to sunset, some as thick as modest trees, others fluttering in the wind like so many strands of hair. The tentacles weaved in the air, apparently not contained to a specific shape. In the space of a few seconds, it stretched up into a long column that easily topped the tallest of the surrounding trees, and then sank down into something more like a lopsided ball of loose rubber bands. It looked like something that belonged on the bottom of the ocean, and it was strangely beautiful.

Coulson cleared his throat, gave Steve one of his trademark bland smiles, and turned his gaze over to the alien, tipping his head to examine it. He had one eyebrow hiked and Steve imagined Coulson mentally writing up a reprimand on the alien for not adhering to the Guidelines for Intergalactic Visitors established (allegedly) sometime after Thor’s initial arrival. Coulson sighed, shook his head, and then said, “Park is clear of civilians. It still hasn’t grabbed anyone as far as we can tell, and hasn’t made much progress moving from its landing site.”

“The balls on that man are seriously impressive,” Tony commented over the comm as he rounded the side of the jet and stepped up behind them.

“I am wired into your network, Iron Man,” Coulson reminded him without turning around. A bare hint of a smile twitched across his lips, but he was otherwise stoic both in the face of Tony’s casual sexual harassment, and the waving bundle of space tentacles fifty yards away.

Tony laughed. His voice turned solicitous. “Giant balls, Coulson. _Giant_. Incidentally, what are you doing this Saturday?”

“Paperwork on your next social disaster, no doubt,” Coulson answered without so much as a change in tone. He stepped out from beneath the shelter of the quinjet and moved towards the alien.

Steve clenched his jaw at Tony’s careless flirting. He didn’t say anything, knowing that Tony would only take it as a challenge and turn the upcoming engagement into one big sexual innuendo. Steve glanced up at the writhing mass of tentacles and guessed there wasn’t much chance he wouldn’t do that anyway, but at least it wouldn’t be aimed at Agent Coulson. Steve made a mental note of the interaction and thought about how to bring it up, or if he should bring it up at all. That kind of talk among the Commandos wouldn’t have been anything worth remarking on, but Steve had sat through eighteen separate trainings on workplace diversity and sexual harassment, and he didn’t really want a nineteenth. Still, if Coulson didn’t mind the attention, and it didn’t make anyone else uncomfortable, did he really have to make an issue out of it?

Clearing his throat, Steve glanced over at Coulson. “ETA on the container?”

Coulson pulled a pocket watch out and clicked it open. The sight of it made Steve’s ribs compress down, and set a dull ache throbbing under his breastbone. His old watch had been in the plastic box of personal possessions that had been recovered from the wreckage of the Valkyrie. He’d left it there, sealed up and pushed under his bed where he wouldn’t be so tempted to just sit and stare at Peggy’s faded picture for hours on end.

Snapping the watch closed, Coulson tucked it into his pocket and folded his hands together in front of his hips. “Four minutes.”

Steve forcefully cleared the distractions from his head, told himself to get it together, and edged closer to the tentacles. They seemed to have gotten the creature’s attention, as much as he could tell without anything even remotely resembling a face to look at it. Most of the tentacles waved in their general direction, twisting around each other and investigating the ground between them and the quinjet. Several of the larger tentacles had burrowed into the ground and wiggled as they dug in deeper, some of the tips poking up through the grass like sentient mushrooms. Steve frowned and eyed the largest of the buried tentacles, trying to gauge how much of it had burrowed underground, and how likely it was that the tip was about to explode up under his feet. He shifted back a step and watched the ground for any unevenness or motion. It reminded him of Bugs Bunny tunneling through the earth, and the visual was not comforting.

“I’m… going to go park,” Clint decided when the whole mass moved several yards closer to the jet.

Steve took another step back and had to agree with Tony’s assessment of Coulson’s metaphorical balls when he only ran a quick glance over the thing, and determined that he was still plenty safe enough. He checked his watch again, clicked his phone display on and dragged his finger across the screen. Clint waited for the rest of the team to unload, and then lifted up and took the jet over the trees and out of sight. The tentacle mass stretched up as if watching him go. It still seemed mostly curious, and Steve wasn’t sure why he didn’t feel more alarmed by it. It had a quality of innocence that he found refreshing. Most of the new things he’d encountered since the serum hadn’t been innocent, or curious, or beautiful. Then again, he’d run into plenty of things that were beautiful and far from innocent.

“So.” Tony stepped up next to him, his helmet up and faceplate drawn down. His voice sounded slightly flat through the modulator, missing a sort of music that Steve had always appreciated. “This is happening.” He made a vague gesture to the tentacles.

“Sure is,” Steve agreed. He was at a loss for anything else to say, and he desperately missed the days when enemies were clearly uniformed and decision making was easier. The tentacles seemed to realize that Clint wasn’t bringing the jet back and sank down into a loose mass that once again took a little more interest in the Avengers than Steve would have liked, but it made sense. They were the only humans in the area who weren’t running away. Steve supposed he would be curious too if he’d landed on an alien planet and all the tentacle balls had started rolling away except for a few. It crept closer to them and Coulson finally stepped away, executing a perfectly timed turn with one hand against his ear. Steve wasn’t sure if he was retreating from the approaching alien or just politely stepping away to take a call.

“Container inbound,” Coulson announced after a brief exchange. He stepped back up to Steve’s side and gestured toward the helicopter just coming into visual range, though Steve had been listening to the _whompwhompwhomp_ of the rotor blades getting closer for several minutes.

Steve put one hand on Iron Man’s warm chest to push him back a few steps as the tentacles covered more ground. It was amazing that Tony even let Steve push him back – a year before and he would have started a shoving match just for the heck of it. Steve reached out belatedly to pull Coulson back with them when it looked like the agent was getting ready for a game of chicken. The tentacle mass moved in a strange shambling roll, the larger tentacles gripping the ground and the smaller limbs undulating over them to move the whole forward. It was both disconcerting and interesting. Obviously captivated, Tony moved away from Steve’s hand, strafing sideways to get a better view of the way it moved.

“Are you seeing this, Bruce?”

“The locomotion is fascinating,” Bruce agreed.  “Maybe herding won’t be a problem – it seems to move towards anything new. It might go into the container on its own. There are biologists of all descriptions who would kill to be here right now.”

“You’re a biologist sometimes,” Tony noted.

Bruce snorted a laugh. “Good thing I don’t have to kill anyone to be here. Can you fly up and try to get behind it? I really want to know where its central body is. Or if even has one; it could be a fully cooperative collective.”

Tony lifted up obligingly and carefully arched around it, Steve keeping a close eye on the motion of the tentacles as several of them perked up. About half of the mass reached out toward the landing helicopter, and several others turned toward Tony. Three of the large tentacles popped out of the earth, leaving deep trenches of overturned earth and uprooted plants behind. The helicopter set the container down as close as it safely could, and Tony rerouted over the mass of tentacles to unhook the chains as the helicopter hovered. The tentacles, startled by Tony’s abrupt departure, reared up in one column and curved toward him, reaching out a slender appendage.

Steve startled forward a step, the shield coming up automatically. “Iron Man-!”

Tony executed a smooth lateral roll and slipped out from under the mass. “You have so little faith in my abilities, Cap,” he chided as he landed on the container. True to Bruce’s prediction, the tentacles started moving in his direction.

“There’s a door in the back of this thing,” Tony noted. “I could fly in, wait for it to follow me, and then fly right out the back.”

“Too risky,” Steve said immediately, wanting to cut that idea off before Tony fell into his habit of carrying on both sides of their conversation by himself, deciding that Steve should be okay with his plan, and then going through with it. It used to make Steve as mad as a hornet in a rainstorm, but he’d eventually realized that Tony wasn’t (usually) intentionally being insubordinate. His mind moved faster than just about anyone else’s, and Steve was apparently his mental sounding board. By the end of the conversation, he was often genuinely under the impression that Steve had been speaking to him the entire time. He probably shouldn’t have, but Steve found the concept of being the voice of a genius’ conscience (of _Tony’s_ conscience) strangely flattering.

That didn’t mean he wanted Tony trapped in a metal box with an unknown alien organism.

Tony made a soft sputtering noise. “Cap, I can-”

“This thing has to be able to move faster than it is right now, and I’m not going to have you locked up in a metal box with it,” Steve said firmly. “Just get above it and see what it does with the container.”

The line was quiet for a moment, and Steve knew that Tony was running through the scenario where he disobeyed orders and went into the container anyways. The outcome must not have been favorable, because he finally lifted off of the corrugated metal container and several yards into the air. For its part, the ball of curious tentacles stood up straighter, several hundred arms reach up towards Tony even as the main mass continued to move towards the box.

“If that isn’t one of the more disturbing things I’ve seen today,” Tony said, firing his thrusters to move up a few more feet.

“Maybe it’s attracted to shiny things,” Natasha suggested. There was a curious note in her voice as she thought aloud, “How does it even _see_?”

“Open the back door on that container and throw in some glow sticks,” Steve ordered, guessing it was worth a try. She jogged around the container and Steve listened to the grate of the metal as she pried it open. A dozen familiar _snaps_ and then a clatter heralded the chemical glow sticks landing on the metal floor. He listened for the door to slam and latch before diverting his attention back to their guest. The first of the largest tentacles were still a dozen yards away from the container as Natasha ran back to the cluster of equipment boxes that Bruce had set up as a base.

The creature came to a rambling stop in front of the container, several tentacles exploring the inside. Steve held his breath, praying to the universe in general that just this one could be easy. His journal entry could read, “ _Nonthreatening tentacle creature appeared in Central Park, and instead of eating half the city, calmly went into the box, made no trouble at SHIELD headquarters, and then went home. No muss, no fuss, no collateral damage_.”

It almost looked like he was going to get his wish. Though several of the tentacles still stretched toward Tony where he hovered a good forty yards above it, the bulk of the mass appeared to be investigating the shipping container. Given another few minutes, it might have completely pulled itself in and they could have close the doors and headed home. It was still early enough to catch a show, eat some leftovers, and maybe sketch the strange encounter for his journal.

Just as the creature was rolling into the container, several loud, panicked shots rang out in the crisp autumn air.  Steve jerked back in the direction of the shots while the world seemed to slow down. A whole group of junior agents, apparently on a field trip, stood a safe distance away with two stunned senior agents standing among them. In the front of the group, a terrified young woman stood with her feet braced apart, handgun out, shooting rapidly. The world jumped back into motion and the tentacles, up to that point curious and moving at a sedate pace, became an angry nest of lashing limbs. It made a noise that set Steve’s teeth on edge and made his spine lock up. It was not quite a roar and not quite the sound of nails on chalkboards. Before Steve could even open his mouth, the ball of tentacles shot toward the junior agent, who continued to fire rapidly into the mass.

Steve was aware of the flurry of motion as his team responded, saw Iron Man streaking after the tentacles out of the corner of his eye, and moved without thought. The thing was every bit as fast as Steve had suspected, but Steve was closer to the agents by a hundred yards. The main group had already scattered, and were running at the strident urging of their superiors. One of the senior agents squared himself against the oncoming freight train of angry death and fired measured shots into the main mass while the other agent darted forward and snagged the junior agent around the waist. She had her mouth open in a soundless scream, pale hair whipping around her face, still pulling the trigger though the gun was empty. The agent got her out of the way just as the first of the tentacles reached them. Her companion, still providing covering fire, was right in the path of the alien. He stood firmly, expression set in the resignation of someone who could see death closing in on them, could hear the Valkyries singing their name. He saw Steve at the last moment, acknowledged his approach with a twitch of his lips, but didn’t move while his fellow agents were still in danger.

Steve barely got in between the agent and the leading tentacle at the last moment, trusting the agent’s training to keep him from shooting him in the back. Steve brought up his shield and one tentacle the size of a small tree fell on him. His whole body vibrated with the force of it, and he dropped him down to one knee under the weight. An earthy scent like dry wood and fresh grass overwhelmed the area around him, and the creature put out enough heat to make Steve shudder at the abrupt temperature change.

“GO!” he shouted around his teeth. Training and experience moved the agent’s feet for him, even if he had meant to stand his ground. The agent dodged around the dozen other tentacles quickly catching up with the largest one still pressing down on Steve’s shield. Steve tried to twist the shield to get out from under the weight while his teammates’ shouted that the area was clear, but Steve couldn’t turn the tentacle away without being crushed by it.

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> STOP!
> 
> Anyone who is here from the update notification for chapter two - the entire story has been edited with content added from beginning to end. The story used to be 4 chapters and now it is 5, so this is the "new" chapter for the notification. 
> 
> If you came straight here to read the new chapter, you might consider heading back to chapter one. ;)

Chapter Two

 

Dozens of tentacles wrapped around him, and he was pulled into the writhing darkness in the space of a single heartbeat. Electrical shocks raced up his limbs, and several larger tentacles squeezed hard on his chest. The shield was ripped out of his grip, wrenching his arm hard in the process. He could feel his ribs straining under the pressure, and knew that they would give out in moments. He struggled to take in air, gasping around several tentacles wrapped around his head. One invaded his mouth as soon as he had it open, and he could vaguely feel tickling pressure on his nose, ears, and eyes. Steve started to panic in earnest, twisting and kicking in the tight confines of the tentacles’ grip. He managed to shove one thick limb away, but it reacted with snakelike speed, binding his legs tightly together in the next instant.

 _Pain. Lightningflash! Pain_.

In the midst of being crushed, Steve couldn’t find the voice. His head throbbed and the sense of _pain_ that wasn’t his was so strong and alien that it forced what little oxygen he still had in his lungs out in a muffled scream. The mass writhed and twisted, pulling his back into an arch that felt like it would snap his spine.

_Pain. Bad flash. Pain!_

_Stop,_ Steve pleaded with the sense of _wrongness_ in his head. He recognized distantly that the creature was communicating. All movement ceased, and Steve guessed that it hadn’t been talking _to_ him, he’d just overheard it. _You’re hurting me,_ he tried, and then replicated that sick sensation in his gut, putting it into words. _Bad flash._

 _Bad flash,_ the voice in his head agreed with a jolt of shock. It wasn’t even a voice as much as it was just… there. The limbs wrapped around him loosened slowly, and he gagged around the thick tentacle working against the back of his throat, trying to suck in a breath.

 _I need to breathe. Please, stop_ , he tried, hoping that it would understand. He had a flash of insight that the creature was only exploring him. It didn’t understand that he needed his throat and nose to breathe. He tried to explain, but his stomach turned over and his lungs seized. Lights exploded against the back of his eyelids, and he was just hovering on the blackness when the tentacle in his mouth gently withdrew. He gasped in a breath, coughed, and then took another. The tiny tentacles that had made it up his nose pulled away. He sneezed twice and coughed again.

The tumult of voices in the comm finally detached from the screaming rush of his own blood. “ _CAP! Say something!_ ” Tony shouted.

“I’m fine,” Steve gasped. There was a strange taste at the back of his throat. It wasn’t exactly unpleasant, but an odd mixture of cherry chapstick and something bitter like cloves. The tentacles squeezed him briefly and set to exploring his throat from the outside. Three slender cords wrapped around his neck and tightened cautiously.

Steve tried a few experimental swallows and winced at both the bitter taste and the dry soreness in his throat. He tried arching away from the tentacles again, made a frustrated noise, and then said, “Don’t shoot it. It’s…communicating. Kind of.” He tried to lift his arms to pull the tentacles away from his throat, but he was he was held so firmly that he could barely twitch.

 _Please let me go,_ he tried. For his efforts, the thick tentacles around his chest squeezed convulsively, giving an immediate sense of a child prepared to fight for a favorite stuffed toy. Steve couldn’t stop the brief bark of pain that set off a flurry of cursing in his ear.

 _Bad flash!_ He told it, and the grip reluctantly loosened again. Dozens of tiny appendages ghosted across his face, petting his exposed skin and setting tingles loose over his scalp.

“Still fine,” he told his team breathlessly. “Give me a minute.”

“Report, Captain,” Coulson demanded, ignoring the request. It was possibly the first time that Steve had heard any real tension in Coulson’s voice. Even staring Loki down, Coulson had been nothing but calm smiles and polite tones. It made him quake to hear that strain. It had been terrifying enough to be swooped up by the alien, but Steve wondered what it must have looked like from the outside? He was probably lucky that Tony hadn’t followed him in with repulsors blazing.

“Not sure,” Steve answered obediently. “But it didn’t like getting shot. I think it’s – ouch!– I think it’s trying to get to know me.” _Bad flash. Pain,_ he told the creature. It withdrew the curious tentacle poking into his ear and shifted him within the mass so he was reclined on his back with his knees tucked up and arms pulled out to either side.

 “Captain… do we still need to have that conversation about hentai?” Tony asked hesitantly, obviously trying to infuse his usual brand of gallows humor into the question, but only barely managed ‘panicking on the inside.’

Suddenly the porn comment made sense. Steve made a noise somewhere between helpless amusement and horror. “God, Tony, no.” He decided not to mention the tentacle-down-the-throat experience. That was not something he needed making the rounds of ‘Remember When…?’ at the next poker game, after it was over and the terror had turned to humor. “You’re a menace.”

In the close silence of the tentacle nest, Steve heard several shaky breaths. Tony’s voice had calmed when he responded, “Sorry, had to ask. How do we get you out of there?”

“I’m working on it.” Asking to be let go hadn’t worked out so well for him, so he decided to try diplomacy. Not his strongest suit, but Pepper had been coaching him for the better part of two years on how to deal with politicians and journalists, so he was getting better. Concentrating hard, Steve tried to reach out to that odd presence he could somehow _feel_ in his head. _Let’s start over. My name is Steve. Do you have a name?_

 _Name?_ The creature asked. Steve finally risked opening his eyes and it was… beautiful. The tentacles arched above him in a dome, each one pulsing with soft golden lights beneath a nearly translucent skin tinted in a range of colors. Despite being completely restrained, he felt only a sense of being protected, sheltered. The sensation made him nervous, and he tested the strength of the tentacles wrapped around him again to limited success.

 _What do I call you?_ Steve tried.

 _We are colony,_ it responded with a mixture of confusion and curiosity that Steve felt pinging around in his chest.

He wasn’t sure how he was differentiating between his own feelings and the ‘colony’s’ feelings, but it was inexplicably clear to him. He’d never worked extensively with an empath or a telepath before, but he wondered if this was how they felt all the time.  As he watched the tentacles moving around him, he realized that there was no central body at all. Each of the tentacles appeared to be a separate entity, all sharing the same consciousness, moving in concert, but still individual. Bruce would be thrilled.

 _Lost_ , it mourned. _Alone._

A familiar pang of loneliness swirled through him. Steve felt himself relaxing unconsciously, settling his weight into the support of the surrounding tentacles. “I know that feeling,” he murmured, accidentally out loud.

“What feeling?” Tony asked.  

Steve shook himself as much as he was able, sharply reminded that he had an audience. He cleared his throat. “Nothing, sorry, talking to the colony.”

“The what?” Bruce asked into the worried silence that followed.

“Let me explain later. Please,” Steve added belatedly, trying to keep track of the low thrum of the colony’s attention and the strange shift between speaking out loud and speaking … what? Telepathically? Emotionally? Mystically? The whole thing was making his head throb. He waited for argument and was deeply appreciative when the comms fell silent after a brief acknowledgement from Coulson. It wasn’t the silence of no one talking over open lines, but rather the silence of a muted line. Steve had been taken off the band, and that probably should have worried him, but the dead air was a blessing.

The tentacles had been shifting against his throat while he’d spoken aloud, and the lights grew steadily brighter and more excited with each word. The vibration of his voicebox was… tickling it? The colony hummed in pleasure, and Steve flushed, finding its vibrations equally pleasant. He cleared his throat and swallowed hard around the lingering flavor of cherries and spice.

 _Will you let us help you?_ Steve asked, trying to banish the thrum of expectant tension settling in his thighs and gut.

 _Pain!_ It accused, making him wince with the force of the word. It was upset and injured. Several individuals were being cradled with him while they healed from the bullet wounds, and a sense of burning that Steve guessed was from the repulsors – maybe Tony _had_ tried to go in after him. Steve fought to turn his head to see one injured tentacle that he sensed was to his left, but he still couldn’t move even that far. He was aware of them though, a niggling sense of wrongness that inspired a twist of fear up his spine.

Taking calming breaths, Steve pushed the concern away. _We’re sorry,_ he said. _That was a mistake._

 _Bad flash! Pain,_ it insisted with a touch of resentment.

Steve shuddered, and felt a brief flash of that pain, but it was somehow in limbs that he didn’t have. He breathed through it. _Yes, I know. It was… a misunderstanding._

The resentment lifted immediately and the colony puzzled over the concept of ‘misunderstanding.’ While it thought, it continued its exploration of his body, pulling his arms and legs to the very limits of his flexibility. He stifled any noises of discomfort and only stopped their exploration when it got to the threshold of breaking something.

 _Misunderstanding_ , it said with a note of firm finality. And then, _What is Steve_?

 _I am Steve,_ he explained patiently, trying not to make any noise as a deep blue tentacle wound around his left arm and tugged sharply upward. It tested the range of his shoulder, making a complete circle and then drawing his arm across his chest.

 _I?_ This took another several seconds of consideration while it stroked against his uniform, pulling gently at the harness, rippling around him like a full body massage that felt good where it didn’t hurt. _Steve is not colony._

 _No, I am an individual_ , he explained, and couldn’t help seeing the parallels to the Borg. Hopefully it wouldn’t turn him into another tentacle in its colony. He would really have to be more careful about what movies he watched with Tony from now on.

 _Steve is alone,_ the colony lamented. _Lost. Home?_

 _I am home,_ Steve told it, shuddering as one slender tentacle finally discovered that his suit was not part of his body. It squirmed down the back of his uniform, pulling the collar tight against his throat, restricting his airway. He tipped his head back to ease the pressure. The tentacle squirmed further down his back and made him laugh as it found the ticklish spot over his ribs. The colony froze, startled by the noise, and then cautiously repeated the motion. Steve laughed again, arching away from it, and a shudder of enjoyment ran through the colony. The limb repeated the action more confidently, a thinner tentacle joining the first to test to the sensitivity of his other side. He was soon laughing too hard to breathe and had to tell the tentacles to stop.

“Care to share with the class, Cap?” Tony inquired, sounding as stressed as Steve could ever remember.

“Tickles,” Steve gasped out around the pressure of his collar against his throat. He was starting to get lightheaded from the impromptu blood choke.

“It’s _tickling_ you?” Tony asked.

“Not on purpose,” Steve clarified. He arched backwards, twisting his body as far sideways as he could manage in the tight hold. The colony responded by tightening down on his waist, the tentacles already down his clothing twisting to curl around his chest. The smooth skin scraping across his nipples sent a wave of shudders down his spine.

 _Pain?_ the colony asked, stilling. _Bad flash?_

 _No, not… pain, exactly,_ Steve corrected. _Just… intense._ He wanted to ask it to loosen its hold, but so far it hadn’t responded well to being asked to let go.

 _Intense,_ the colony echoed.

Steve let it continue and tried to keep himself relaxed. He was just grateful that none of them had figured out how to get around his belt, though he guessed that it wouldn’t take long. He’d managed to twist just far enough to get the zipper on his collar to open, giving him another precious centimeter of breathing room.

Relaxing to take advantage of it, he asked, _Will you let us help you?_

 _What is Steve help?_ It asked after a long delay of casual petting. The invasion of his personal space was distinctly uncomfortable after two years of precious little physical contact, but he set his discomfort firmly aside. A tiny tentacle wormed into his boot and he twitched at the spike of pain. He must have twisted the ankle at some point during capture or the subsequent examination.

He drew in a steadying breath while the tentacle prodded the injured ankle.

 _Let us take you away from here,_ Steve suggested. _Where you will be safe. We can try to help you get home._

 _Home,_ the colony thrummed. _Steve stays with colony?_

Steve didn’t even know if it would be possible to get the colony home, so he didn’t want to promise he would stay with it until they could return it to wherever it had come from. He also didn’t want to lose the tentative trust that he’d managed to build. _I will make sure the colony is safe,_ he said instead.

 _Steve is damaged,_ the colony said mournfully. The thin tendril coiled three times around Steve’s ankle and massaged it gently. It grew warm against his skin, pulsing in time with his heartbeat.

 _It’s okay,_ Steve soothed, realizing that the colony was worried for him. Its concern filled him up with the bubbly warm feeling of wrapping up in a soft blanket on a cold night and somehow managing to achieve a perfect temperature. It was strange that a creature who had known him for less than ten minutes could be so heartwarmingly concerned for him. _It will heal quickly._ He could already feel the heat in it that meant the serum was doing its job.

 _Safe,_ the colony told him. _Steve will stay safe. Steve goes, colony goes._

Letting out a grateful breath, Steve made the conscious shift to verbal speech. “Okay, I think our new friend has agreed to let us take it back to SHIELD. Everyone needs to keep their distance, and please don’t hurt it.”

“And you?” Coulson asked.

“Looks I’m going along for a ride in the box,” Steve said regretfully into the expectant silence. As much as he didn’t think that the colony was going to hurt him, he would still much rather be in the quinjet with his team. “I promised to get it to safety. So be gentle.”

 _Please go inside the box,_ Steve said, picturing the shipping container. The colony hesitated. _No bad flash, no pain. I promise._ He just had to hope that there were no more incidents, because he was under no illusions that the colony could crush every bone in his body with a thought. A moment later, he was treated to the strange sensation of the world moving around him while he was held immobile. It felt less like moving forward over the earth as it did the earth moving backwards below him.

The colony stopped again. _Shiny_! it said, and Steve didn’t know why, but he was sure it was talking about Tony.

 _Shiny is okay,_ Steve fumbled, just in case they either took Tony for a threat, or decided to adopt him. _Please don’t grab him!_

 _But… safe,_ it protested, honestly confused by the notion of Tony, as a single individual, not wanting to be in the safety and protection of the colony.

 _He is safe_ , Steve responded firmly.

Although obviously uncertain, the colony relented. Steve felt movement again and heard the clatter of tentacles on metal. A few moments later, he heard the doors close, and realized that everything he was hearing from outside the tentacles was through the comm unit. It was quiet, and warm, and comfortable in the dome of tentacles. He felt safer and more relaxed inside its grip than he had since his mother’s death, and he wasn’t sure how he felt about it.

“We’re getting the container hooked up to the quinjet, Cap,” Clint told him. “Hold on in there. I’ll be as gentle as possible.”

“Thank you.”

Steve warned the colony that it was going to hear some noises and start moving. The colony was unconcerned by it, attention captivated by something else. Steve felt a flash of terror that Tony had disobeyed him after all and was in the container, but a glow stick shortly appeared in the mass of limbs.

 _Don’t squeeze that too tight,_ he warned, breathing a sigh of relief. _There’s a chemical inside. It might hurt you._

 _Pain?_ It asked, alarmed.

 _Only if you break it,_ Steve reassured it, _just be gentle with it, don’t bend it._

_Shiny,_ it answered with a kind of reverence. Steve wondered how the mass perceived light without any eyes that he could see, but it was safe to say that Natasha’s assessment was correct. _Pleasure_ , it hummed, passing the glow stick from one curling tentacle to another. Steve watched as more entered the safe nest and disappeared out of his limited range of sight.

 “It does like shiny things,” Steve told his team. “And it’s got a crush on you, Iron Man.”

Tony snorted. “You say that like you’d assumed it _wouldn’t_?”

“Heaven forbid even a giant ball of alien tentacles doesn’t find you charming?” Steve asked, feeling playful and relaxed under all the warmth. Tony snorted out another laugh and Steve wondered if he was going to have to write himself up for sexual harassment, or if it counted as harassment at all. He hadn’t said anything suggestive, though after Tony’s comments about _hentai_ and mentions of Coulson’s ‘giant balls,’ it could be viewed that way. He dismissed the overthinking and tried to keep the conversation normal, even though the tentacles had started to work him out of his clothing. That was going to be fun to explain later.

 _Not skin,_ the colony explained as it figured out the zipper on the front of his uniform and forced it open to his waist. He felt immediately exposed in the warm, dry air, made worse by the fact that he couldn’t look down at himself. _Why?_ the colony asked.

 _It keeps me warm,_ Steve tried to explain. _Safe,_ he added, because he didn’t think the colony would be terribly impressed by concepts like personal space and modesty.

 _Colony keeps Steve warm. Safe._ It responded, sounding petulant, as if Steve’s clothing was a personal affront to its abilities. For all he knew, maybe it was. He gave up protesting as the harness came off, the colony manipulating his limbs easily to strip him out of the top even as his boots were tugged away. Maybe if he had a colony of dexterous tentacles in the locker room, he wouldn’t have so much trouble getting dressed for missions.

 “Fair warning,” Steve started, a blush rushing up his neck and warming his cheeks and ears. He cleared his throat and stifled a gasp as the clever appendages figured out his belt and dove right under it. “I might be naked when I get out of here.”

Silence reigned for a second and Steve added, “And don’t you say one word about it, Tony Stark.”

“Me?” Tony asked, all innocence. “Why would I say anything about you being naked in the middle of a ball of tentacles like some pretty hentai character?”

Steve groaned and then yelped as the tentacles lifted his dick up and tugged on it. “Oh, God,” he moaned in complete mortification and tried to pull back. It didn’t seem bother by his squirming and just held tighter, a second tentacle twisting around his testicles and giving an experimental squeeze that sent a zing of nausea rolling through him.

 _Stop!_ Steve hastened, _Very intense, bad flash!_

The tentacle did not withdraw, but obligingly stopped squeezing.

“What, what? What’s going on?” Tony asked immediately.

“Nothing! Let me know when we get to headquarters.” He bit the inside of his lip and pushed his head back as far as he could, not sure if he was trying to escape the firm appendages wrapping around his body or arching into them. The pressure of the tentacles had felt only of power and safety when he was clothed. Against his naked flesh, the slide of their soft bodies was unexpectedly erotic.

 _Connection. Pleasure,_ the colony told him smugly. _Happy lights. Good flash._

 _It…_ Steve was painfully aware of his teammates listening to every sound, no doubt creating a thousand scenarios in their heads for what was going on, and heaven help him if they wouldn’t be right. He tried hard to regulate his breathing, to tamp down on the swell of arousal building under his skin. It was like sitting in front of a blazing fire and having ice pulled across his body.

 _Intense,_ he told the colony finally. _Please_ , he continued, but he couldn’t make himself say ‘stop,’ soaking up the contact like a parched plant set in water. How long had it been since he’d last been touched? It was possibly the most embarrassing capitulation of his life, but he let his mind white out with the pleasure of it and added it to the list of things he would deal with later.

 _Good flash,_ it told him. _Steve is happy lights_. The large tentacles supporting his back and wrapped around his upper body undulated against him, small tendrils petting his hips and the space behind his knees. A flat, firm tentacle wrapped around his abruptly hard cock, smaller tentacles gently examining his balls, stroking the crevice of his ass and flickering at the tight muscle there. It was like being in the middle of a hundred hands, and he was pathetically grateful for the curious limb that covered his mouth. He was compliant enough about being gagged considering his sharp-eared audience. He opened his mouth at the first tentative brush of pressure on his lips. The tentacle pushed gently past his teeth, and Steve moved his tongue to block it from going too far into his throat. The movement of his tongue set off an almost blinding golden glow in the colony, and the entire mass shivered around him.

He was at a weird angle for it, but he closed his eyes and sucked on the appendage, moving his tongue against it. He was out of practice, but he fell back into the rhythm easily enough. The texture of the tentacle was soft, close enough to skin that he could satisfy the illusion, but still different enough to keep him grounded. The colony hummed in ecstatic pleasure and the vibration of it against his skin set him off like a bottle rocket. He choked on the limb and felt every muscle in his body go bowstring tight. Orgasm ran through him like a flash fire and he strained against the colony as he exploded. It froze as well, the tentacles immediately against him stilling, though he felt that the colony as a whole was never completely motionless.

 _Pain?_ it asked in confusion. Limbs immediately started examining him for damage and, if anything, that just made the pulse of his orgasm stronger.

Steve rode through it, and then the tension washed out of him like water through a sieve. He relaxed against the hold of the colony, and obligingly opened his mouth when the tentacle pulled away, glistening wet and glowing so brightly that he could hardly make out its shape through the light. He had to close his eyes against it, but he probably wouldn’t have kept his eyes open for much longer either way.

 _Not pain,_ Steve said, feeling completely drained and deliriously happy. _Intense._

 _Intense_ , it hummed, reassured. _Pleasure?_

 _Yes._ He wanted to explain that it wasn’t really polite to just grab a fella and wring an orgasm out of him without so much as a drink and a pick up line, but he couldn’t muster the energy. He doubt that SHIELD was going to make an alien sit through a sexual harassment seminar any way, and the attention had been very welcome.

“You okay in there, Cap?” Clint asked cautiously. “We heard some… something.”

Steve froze, mind nudging through the post-orgasmic haze to pour over the last several minutes in search of anything he might have said, any sound he might have made to give himself away. There’d probably been a lot of shouting. He didn’t even have the blood flow to manage blushing, and couldn’t force enough tension into his limbs to be properly mortified. The embarrassment would probably come later, but Steve was too warm and happy to care for the moment.

“I’m fine.”

“Can it hear me talking?” Clint asked cautiously, his voice kept strictly neutral.  

“I don’t think so,” Steve answered lazily. “Or at least, it doesn’t seem to understand vocal speech.” The limbs around his throat flexed and nuzzled against him. Steve decided not to pass on that the colony really enjoyed verbal speech, whether it understood or not.

“Okay,” Clint acknowledged. “Is it hurting you? Because, I swear, we will figure out a way to get you out of there right now if it’s hurting you.”

Steve was relieved to realize that they hadn’t really heard anything. Or at least nothing definitive. He cleared his throat. The cherry clove taste was stronger, but no more unpleasant for it. “We’ve had a few… misunderstandings,” he admitted, which wasn’t even a lie. “But I’m fine. It’s trying to keep me safe. And it feels sorry for me,” he added with a laugh that made his little cave glow.

“Sorry for you?”

Steve nodded, even though Clint couldn’t see him. “Because I’m not part of a colony. It might be trying to adopt me.” About which Steve was blissfully unconcerned just then.

“Uh… that’s not…we are _not okay_ with that!” Clint hissed, sounding panicked. Through the colony, Steve felt the container tilt, and then move back to level.

“Diplomatic channels haven’t broken down yet,” Steve soothed, unconcerned.  

He felt deliciously relaxed in a way he hadn’t in years, maybe… maybe not ever. As a child, he’d always been too sick, in too much pain, and far too aware of how much trouble he caused his mother. As a teenager, he’d still been too sick, in too much pain, still causing too much trouble, but he’d also had to contend with being the smallest guy in class, being awkward around girls and… well, everyone. As an adult, he’d always been tense for a fight, still too sick, in too much pain.

After the serum, it had all been tests, poking and prodding, being up on stage and staring across at a crowd while his heart flipped around in his chest like a landed fish, too shy, still too awkward. And then there was the war, of course, where he spent every free moment worrying a hole in his stomach over the health and safety of his men.

When he’d woken up from the ice, the world was suddenly even bigger and louder than before, and everything had been so different, and he was sometimes unable to do even the simplest things that a four-year old could manage without trouble. He was still too awkward, didn’t quite know how to get close to anyone, still worrying a hole in his stomach for his team. It was amazing to just relax. His limbs felt a thousand miles away and he was okay with just being sheltered for a little while.

“Okay, Cap, we’re getting ready to set you down on a rig that will drive you into a secure lab. You doing alright in there?”

 “Yeah, I’m good.” He tried to make it sound like he was alert and aware, and not blissful with afterglow, but he was just barely managing to hover on the right side of consciousness. “Meet us down there, but everyone keep their distance. Natasha, Clint, I want you outside of the room.”

He knew they wanted to protest by the quality of the silence that followed, but finally there was a string of agreements. He warned the colony about the upcoming change in motion, and it completely ignored the announcement in favor of shifting his position, petting over his skin, nuzzling against his face, examining the curiosity of his hair and eyelashes, and drawing the tip of one tentacle through the pool of sweat on his chest.

Once the container stopped moving, Steve tried to rouse himself to appear as awake and unmolested as possible, but it was difficult with the languor still warming his muscles. The large doors opened with a clatter and Steve sensed the shift in the colony’s attention.

 “Okay, Captain,” Coulson announced over the comm, “We’re ready if you can get our guest to come out. I have a pair of sweatpants waiting for you.”

Steve blushed, but Coulson’s voice was nothing but professional, not a leer or a smile to be heard. “I’ll try. Who’s in the room?”

“Just me, and Bruce, and Coulson’s giant balls,” Tony told him cheerfully.

Steve stifled a laugh, his sensitive hearing picking up the faint sigh from Coulson’s line. “Do you even know how to _spell_ the word ‘professional,’ Tony?”

Tony chuckled. “That one was not on the spelling bee study list, sorry.”

The back and forth was comfortable and Steve appreciated it. He took in a deep breath and tried to banish the lazy warmth from his limbs. _Do you want to go outside the box?_ Steve asked the colony. It stirred around him, flashing with delight over the conversation and perfectly happy with Steve and some glow sticks.

 _Where?_ It asked, equal parts reluctant and curious.

 _A safe place,_ Steve promised. _No pain. We just need to leave the box._

The colony took time to deliberate. It was interesting being a part of the discussion – hundreds of individuals all speaking with one voice, considering the situation with such lightning speed that Steve picked up on only bits and pieces of the conversation. It wasn’t like a debate among politicians, no one individual bringing up points or arguing, it was more like the same process that Steve would go through when he was debating a decision with himself.

 _Outside,_ it finally decided. The colony shifted Steve and the injured individuals around in the nest and then started moving, cautiously extending the longest, strongest tentacles to explore. _Cold_ , it complained. _Bad soil. Hard._

 _Concrete,_ Steve guessed. The colony repeated the word with puzzlement, more and more tentacles reaching out to test the smooth, hard surface.

 _Not pleasure,_ it said unhappily. _Not pain. Not intense. Cold._

“Can we work on getting some carpet, or blankets, or something soft in here?” Steve asked over the comms while the colony reluctantly pulled itself out of one hard, cold environment and into another. Steve realized as the process continued that he was _aware_ of what each limb was doing, the same way he was aware of his own hands. It was terrifying. He swallowed hard and bit back the sudden swell of panic, his mind racing through all the millions of reasons he should not have just _had sex_ with an alien organism.

“We’ll get moving on that right away,” Coulson answered.

“Thanks,” Steve said weakly. He closed his eyes and took deep breaths through his nose, counting slowly backwards from fifty. It was an exercise he’d developed as a kid, laying in his bed in so much pain that it overwhelmed everything, but knowing that his mother desperately needed sleep. She would have come to him if he’d cried out, she would have pet his hair and rocked him gently, and eventually fallen asleep in his bed. The next day she would have been pale and worn down just a little bit more, but she would have smiled at him, and made him breakfast and kissed him before she left for her first job. As much as Steve had wanted to be cuddled, he would close his eyes, breathe deeply, and count backwards from fifty. Sometimes from five hundred. But usually he’d gotten to sleep without waking her.

 “Any chance we can get you out of there, Captain Rogers?” Coulson asked when Steve was just getting down into single digits.

He finished out the count before responding, “I can try.” He didn’t want to risk the ‘let go’ question again, so he asked, _Can you move me to the outside of the colony?_

 _Damaged,_ the colony protested. _Stay safe._ It cuddled him tighter, pressing him into the wall of protective limbs and stroking a dozen small tentacles through his hair.

Steve relaxed into the embrace, tilting his head into the nearest limbs. _Already healed,_ he told it, doing his best to move his ankle in demonstration. Curious, a tiny tendril flickered at his ankle.

 _Not damaged,_ the colony agreed, amazed. It loosened its hold to explore the rest of his body for damage. Steve was able to stretch for the first time and took advantage of it. The colony enjoyed him moving and rippled in response, flashing gold. He considered trying to just crawl out, but he didn’t see that as ultimately working well if the colony didn’t want to let him go. It did afford him the first chance to see the injured tentacles. There were a dozen of them in various states of injury, several showing blackened skin where Tony’s repulsors had left deep bruises and burns. One had taken three bullets and lay limply in the coils of one of its fellows. The nursing tentacle constricted around it in a slow ripple, working the colony’s brand of healing on the damaged member. Steve reached out very slowly and gently stroked the exposed tip of the injured tentacle. It flashed a weak gold and curled briefly around his finger.

 _Not damaged,_ the colony decided, concluding its examination.

 _Can I go outside?_ He asked carefully. As he’d half expected, the colony tightened down on him immediately.

He gasped. _Too tight._ The pressure loosened, but he was once again immobile. He thought about how to rephrase the question, and finally tried, _I need to talk to my… my colony._

 _Steve is individual._ The colony hesitated, trying to reconcile the two concepts.

_Yes, Steve is individual. But I have other individuals that make up my colony. We don’t communicate the way you do. I need to see them._

_See?_

Steve hadn’t the slightest idea of how to explain sight to something that obviously perceived the world through very different senses. He struggled for several minutes, gave up, and tried, _Please?_

A quick, but fierce debate railed in the colony. For the first time, he saw that the tentacles could light up with other colors. They flickered blue and green while they considered his apparently controversial request, and the injured tentacles pulsed dull, unhappy red and dirty yellow.

When it didn’t seem like the debate was going his way, he interrupted to try negotiation. _You can keep a limb around me,_ he offered, _and I won’t go far_.

 _Outside cold,_ it argued back. _Colony keeps Steve warm._

 _Colony does a good job_ , Steve placated, _But I need to go outside._ He tried to inject some firmness into his tone without setting off a panic. The colony reluctantly agreed. Steve let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding as he was pushed through the mass of warm tentacles. He had very little concept of which direction he was going, so it was a shock when he felt concrete under one naked foot. He hissed at the cold and was quickly yanked back in amongst the tentacles. It took another several minutes of convincing to get it to let him go again.

When he emerged from the tangle of limbs, Coulson was waiting a daring three feet away with the promised sweatpants folded neatly over his arm. “Welcome back, Captain,” he greeted with a smile as though it was completely normal to stand by while a giant mass of tentacles reluctantly released a member of his team.

“Thanks,” Steve responded, abruptly exhausted. He reached for the pants and struggled to get his legs free of the colony long enough to put them on. As soon as it realized what he was doing, one tentacle reached out and snatched the pants away.

 _Colony keeps Steve warm,_ it said with that same petulant tone, the thick tentacle around his waist coiling several more times around his hips and the tops of this thighs.

Steve drew in a fortifying breath and held himself still.  _Colony keeps Steve warm,_ he agreed. He patted the tentacle, watching the flicker of golden lights under the skin. _But right now, colony keeps Steve warm only right here. I need my… my fake skin. Please give it back._

The tentacle gave him a tug back towards the central mass. Steve reached out instinctively and Coulson met him halfway, locking a strong hand around his forearm. The colony reared up at the intrusion, dozens of tentacles arching over him and aiming at Coulson in obvious threat.

Steve immediately let go of the agent. “Back up!” he ordered, and Coulson took one deliberate step backwards, holding his hands up in the universal sign of peaceful intentions. Behind him, Tony and Bruce inched forward. Bruce, Steve noticed, was shirtless. Steve did not want to see what would happen if the colony had to contend with Hulk. As glad as he was to see Tony, he was annoyed to see him outside of the suit – if he’d known Tony was going to take it off, he would have made him stay out of the room with Natasha and Clint. It stood in the corner behind him, all the lights on and probably recording, taking measurements and compiling data.

“Stop!” Steve said sharply, repeating the command firmly to the colony. _Stop it right now. These are members of my colony. You will not hurt them._

Startled and chagrined, the colony recoiled, drawing down into a tight ball. The half dozen tentacles still wrapped around him constricted and released soothingly. It apologized, one limb rolling up his back in a pleasant caress and nuzzling briefly against his face.

Steve held out a hand. _Give me back the pants._ The soft cotton sweats materialized a moment later, but the colony didn’t give them back. Moving with stuffy preciseness, it lifted him off his feet and efficiently redressed him. A moment later, his uniform, boots, harness, and shield were gently set on the floor and nudged towards Coulson like a peace offering. Steve was set back on the floor once the pants were secure and all but one of the tentacles retreated.

“So…this is maybe the strangest porn I’ve ever watched,” Tony mused, speaking for the first time.

Bruce made a noise of agreement and Steve flushed bright red. “Not how I pictured the day going,” he commented finally. He fished his socks out of his boots and quickly put them on, looking up at Coulson. “How are we coming on those soft things?”

“A rug and some pillows are waiting outside the door. I didn’t want to have anyone else bring them in.” His eyes flickered to the gently weaving tentacles behind Steve.

“I’ll get them,” Bruce offered.

Steve took the opportunity to examine the room for the first time. On closer inspection, he wasn’t sure he would call it a room. It looked more like a parking garage. A ramp at the far back was sealed off with a heavy steel door, the space looked to be about thirty feet wide, sixty feet long, and more than twenty feet tall. At the nearest end were two steel doors with a narrow stretch of tinted glass between them. He could see that the colony wouldn’t be happy in the space for long. Bruce returned a moment later dragging a roll of carpet under one arm, and a giant black trash bag with the opposite hand. Tony helped him roll out the area rug, and they upended the bag of throw pillows on top.

The items immediately caught the colony’s attention and Steve encouraged it to go explore. It tried to drag him along, but he dug his heels in and leaned away. _You go, I need to stay here._

 _Cold,_ it explained, baffled by Steve’s reluctance to be moved from the chilly concrete.

 _I need to talk to my colony,_ Steve repeated stubbornly and it finally left him with the equivalent of a long-suffering sigh.

“I take it the creature has become attached to you?” Coulson asked once the colony was occupied with examining the pillows.

Steve hadn’t thought he could flush any more deeply, but a wave of heat rose up on his cheeks and made his scalp prickle. He cleared his throat. “You could say that.”

 “And it doesn’t like your clothing,” Tony added. He’d been remarkably quiet, and his eyes were shrewd and intense where they raked over Steve’s half-clad body. Steve felt a ridiculous impulse to cover his chest and only barely resisted the urge.

Steve explained as much as he had learned about the colony, omitted what had, without a doubt, been the strangest sexual experience he’d ever even _heard_ of, and tried his best to play interpreter between Coulson and the colony. With the colony convinced that the individuals were no direct threat to it or to Steve, it lost interest in the discussion quickly, and it took effort to get its attention with questions it found uninteresting.

“How is it communicating with you?” Tony asked distractedly. He was hunkered down a few feet away from the colony where it was happily cuddling a giant stuffed panda bear that it had found among the pillows.

“I’m not sure. ‘Telepathically’ is the only word that makes sense, but I can’t really explain it. It’s not… it’s not like talking. I just sort of…” Steve struggled with the words, and finally shrugged. “Know.”

Tony glanced up at him, putting one hand down to balance his weight. “Interesting. And you said that inside it lights up? Like how?”

“Pulses mostly, different colors. Sometimes individuals will start to glow, depending on how they feel. The injured ones are glowing red and kind of a dirty yellow. When they’re happy, they flash white-gold.”

“Sounds like electrical impulses to me,” Bruce commented from the wall by the two way mirror. He’d kept himself out of the situation as much as possible, but had stayed in the room just in case the Hulk was needed to subdue their visitor, but it seemed less and less likely as the minutes passed.

 “Mmm,” Tony agreed. “Without any additional information, I’m guessing that you’re right, Green Bean.” He turned and gave Steve a smile that was too bright to be anything other than scared. “They’re tapped right into your nervous system, Cap. Lucky you.”

Steve swallowed hard and shivered.

“So how do we help it get home?” Coulson asked finally.

“No idea. I’ll try to ask, but it’s pretty enamored with those pillows right now, and not really interested in the strange little creatures who don’t have colonies.” Steve shrugged again, annoyed at how often he was having to make that helpless gesture.

 _Can you tell me about home?_ Steve asked. _Do you know how to get back there?_

The colony paused, momentarily abandoning the soft pillows. In response, it drew Steve slowly back toward it, less pulling and more guiding him along. A sudden melancholy suffused the colony, and Steve didn’t have the heart to refuse what was obviously comfort. The colony did not pull him in completely, but arranged him against the outermost tentacles, shifting so he was supported in a comfortable recline.

Warmth pulsed through him and a golden haze settled over the room. He closed his eyes as a sudden flood of fright sent shivers down his spine and made him shake. The colony didn’t so much answer his question as show him. He _was_ the colony, one tiny individual among thousands, a tightly woven sphere passing through the void of space, exploring. They had sensed the other beings long before they were in range to examine the new curiosity. It was a strange colony where all the limbs were separated from each other, but arranged in a pattern.

Steve recognized them as ships. He felt dread pool in his stomach as they drew closer to the vessels, curious and excited to encounter other creatures. The colony had met other creatures on different planets, but never in the void before. It reached out one of the guard tentacles, a limb that was big enough to keep the smaller limbs safe in the nest, flashing with bright excitement and greeting. The ships flashed as well, but their flashes were red and blue – angry, and hurt, and sad? The colony didn’t understand. The tiny capsules of light flashed across the empty space between them, and –

_Pain, pain! Bad flash!_

The guard tentacle drew back in to protect the safe nest, adjusting course as the unknown creatures fired more bolts of angrypainsadness. The creatures separated from their pattern completely, circling around the colony as it tried to escape. The colony attempted to communicate, but the creatures were cold and unyielding and did not respond.

One guard tentacle was ripped away from the greater colony, exposing the safe nest to the void. The subcolonies were all sucked out, disconnected from the greater colony.

_Pain! Panic! Fear!_

The pressure was too much – the subcolonies were not meant to be exposed to the void. Guard tentacles reached out to draw them back in, wrapping around them and trying to reconnect to the whole while the strange creatures kept raining angrypainsadness all around them.

Steve’s subcolony drifted far out of range of the guard tentacles trying to recover their nestmates. They could only compress into a tight ball and try to survive long enough to rejoin the greater colony. The injured guard tentacle struck out, wrapping around one ship and crushing it. The ship was a guard tentacle of the other creatures’ colony – smaller members exploded out of it while the guard tentacle wrapped around another ship, and then another, smashing them together. Most of the subcolonies had been retrieved, but not Steve’s subcolony. It was too far away, too small and too cold to manage locomotion. It drifted helplessly while some of the ships pulled back from the fight and fled.

A sadcurious-blue ring of light opened in the void of space. It was too close to the subcolony to avoid. A guard tentacle was reaching out for the subcolony, but before it had crossed the distance, the subcolony was pulled through the sadcurious ring and sucked away.

When it stopped moving, the subcolony was on solid land, surrounded by air that was not warm, but was warmer than the void. It was injured and disconnected from the greater colony and did not know where it was. It was lost.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter Three

In the wake of the surprisingly exhausting day, Steve found himself at a loss. His team had been politely banished from the room by Agent Coulson, and he’d been provided with a SHIELD t-shirt that was at least two sizes too small. They told him that it was the only one available on short notice, but Steve wasn’t sure he believed them. SHIELD’s tendency to dress him in tight clothing was becoming habitual.

Coulson stood firmly in the middle of the room with a broom in hand and watched calmly as the colony explored the space. Mismatched carpets had been dragged in by the bundle, some of them obviously old and worn, others still bearing price-tags and smelling strongly of carpet glue. After the first three were rolled out and shoved under curious tentacles, the colony took over, snaking long limbs into the tubes of rolled carpets and drawing them back to cover the ‘bad soil.’

Steve watched, bemusedly, as the colony carefully arranged the carpets in some pattern that he couldn’t figure out. He sat atop the pile of tentacles, letting it shift him around as carpets were carefully examined, presented for his apparent approval, and then layered over earlier carpets, or banished to far corners of the room.

While the colony rearranged its temporary quarters, Coulson watched over two SHIELD agents who were carefully pulling yellow tape across the room and just as carefully not looking at the giant bundle of tentacles dragging Captain America around like a stuffed doll. Once the tape was laid out, they spray-painted “ **H U M A N** **• L I N E** ” in bold letters on one side. A pair of tentacles inched over the line to investigate the paint, and then jolted in surprise when Coulson reached over with the broom and nudged them back.

 _Why?_ The colony asked, a third tentacle sliding around Coulson to get to the paint.

Without comment, Coulson twisted and swept the tentacle gently away. Rearing up, the tentacle wrapped around the broom and gave it a tug. Coulson held on.

 _Let it go,_ Steve said gently.

 _Why?_ Holding onto the broom, it ruffled the bristles, and shivered, flickering gold. Two dozen tiny tentacles slid into the bristles to explore them. _Colony?_ It asked, flashing half a dozen different colors at the broom.

Steve stifled laughter. _No. It’s a broom. To clean with._ He did his best to picture sweeping a floor. The colony gave the broom a firm tug and Coulson finally let it go. Wrapping around it, the colony swished the broom across the floor, but Coulson stepped in between it and the fresh paint before the tentacles could get to it.

 _It’s wet_ , Steve tried to explain, _It will make a mess_.

The colony waved the broom at him. Steve laughed and shook his head. Coulson gestured for another broom, unscrewed the handle from the bristles, and then lobbed the bristles at the excited colony. He planted the wooden tip of the handle on the floor and wrapped a hand around the metal end so he could rest his chin on it.

 _Phil is colony?_ the colony asked. It had a dozen tentacles swirled around Coulson’s feet, maintaining a precise three-foot distance away from him.

 _No_ , Steve said for the eighth time.

One tentacle lifted up as if examining him. Coulson stared blandly back at it, and then reached out and shooed another wandering limb away from the wet paint. A flicker of part-irritation, part-amusement thrummed through the colony. It gave up investigating the paint and withdrew from the area, turning its attention back to the pillows. It picked one up and moved it to another corner of the room, and then retrieved the stuffed panda from inside the tangle of tentacles and shoved it against Steve’s chest.

“Captain?” Coulson called, once Steve had taken the panda. “If you could convince your friend to retreat to the other side of this line and stay away from the paint?”

“I’ll do my best,” Steve answered, setting the panda in his lap and giving Coulson a tired smile from his perch ten feet up. He passed the request onto the colony, and the colony prodded at the tape questioningly.

 _Why?_ it asked curiously, five limbs plaiting together to rise up to Coulson’s height.

 _Because… it will make my colony less nervous,_ Steve tried to explain.

 _Nervous_ , the colony repeated. A quick burst of aquamarine and then pink flared through the tangle of limbs. Steve couldn’t identify the flash of color and brief surge of emotion, but the tentacles all withdrew away from the “human line.”

“Thank you,” Coulson said with a serene, confident smile. Steve wasn’t as sure of the results, but he couldn’t say one way or another. Coulson nodded to one of the two doors beyond the human line. “There’s a bathroom, with a shower. We’ll bring in a bed and food for you. Is there anything you or our guest needs?”

He said it without a trace of uncertainty. _Guest_ , as if the colony was a visiting human dignitary. Steve appreciated it, and was immediately confused by exactly how much he appreciated it. Coulson stepped backwards over the ring of tentacles, which obligingly pulled away to maintain the three foot barrier, and then stopped entirely once he was past the human line. The tentacles withdrew to the main body and several looped over Steve’s legs.

Steve spent ten fruitless minutes trying to convince the colony to let him go so he could grab a shower and a few hours of sleep. It wasn’t a real conversation after the colony decided that it was illogical for Steve to want to be separated and it mostly ignored him. He gave up and climbed over the mass of tentacles stretched out across the floor with several of the limbs still wrapped around his torso.

The bathroom was a single concrete block with a toilet, sink, a plastic chair under a row of plastic hooks, a shower head set in one wall, and a drain in the middle of the floor. A single shelf over the row of hooks held a plastic bag with a few little bottles of toiletries and a white towel that looked like it had been stolen from a motel. The mirror was fogged and scratched, obviously not glass. Steve wondered vaguely who the usual occupant of the underground concrete room was, and then decided that he might not want to know. Half a dozen tentacles followed him into the room and started poking around, wrapping coils around the toilet and the base of the sink.

 _That’s… not clean,_ Steve said, not sure how to express ‘unsanitary,’ leaning over to tug the coils of pale blue tentacles away from the toilet. The limb moved, but a few moments later a dark brown tentacle as wide as his arm and glittering with golden lights thrust the broom into the room. It pressed the bristles against the porcelain, and Steve just watched in helplessly for several seconds, trying –and failing – to rein in his laughter.

He struggled out of his clothes and tried to hang them up on the hooks, but the colony snatched them out of his hands and whisked them away. He put his hands on his hips and pursed his lips, but judged his odds of getting his clothing back when he didn’t actually need to be wearing it as somewhere in the vicinity of “snowball in hell.”

At least the water pressure was good and it took only seconds to heat up. At the first splash of water on the tile, the colony extended a tentacle toward the spray. It recoiled in shock at the hot droplets, alternately flickering a dozen colors. More tentacles pushed into the bathroom, and before Steve could even open his mouth, half of the colony was trying to shove under the spray.

Shaking his head in reluctant amusement, he pushed under the faucet with a bottle of shampoo. The colony ended up getting as much of the suds as he did.

~*~

By the time Steve made it out of the shower, four cots had been set up on the human side of the yellow line and his team had apparently taken up residence. Natasha, Clint, and Bruce were dressed in SHIELD sweats, but Tony had just stripped down his boxers and a thick black t-shirt.

“What are you guys doing?” he asked, attempting to towel his hair dry while the colony prodded the terry cloth with great interest. He’d been playing a concerted game of tug-of-war to hold onto the cloth long enough to dry himself off, and he definitely wasn’t winning. His reluctantly-returned clothing was sticking to his skin and his back and legs felt uncomfortably damp.

“You think we’re letting you stay alone in here with a big ball of alien tentacles?” Clint asked by way of response. He’d taken the cot closest to the colony and was stubbornly ignoring Tony’s attempts to roust him from the space, calmly turning the pages of a comic book and repelling Tony’s attacks with a single foot pressed into Tony’s stomach.

Steve looked in between the colony and his team. He loved his team, but as a whole, they were not very good with impulse control. He wouldn’t put it past at least one of them to try to ‘rescue’ him in the middle night while the colony slept. _If_ the colony slept at all, which didn’t feel was very likely. “That’s not necessary-”

“Don’t argue,” Natasha interrupted. She’d taken the cot in the corner where she could see everyone, and was supremely unconcerned by the whole situation. She didn’t even look at him, her gaze trained on her toenails – she was painting her big toe lime green, but Steve could see that the other nails were bright pink.

Steve finally gave up the towel and watched his team’s antics with a fond smile. When he’d woken up in what was, to him, the future, he’d experienced a feeling of such overwhelming loss that it was a physical pain, something hard and heavy that would crush his bones. Everyone he’d ever known, everyone he’d ever loved, gone in what felt like a blink of the eye. It was as though there had been a massive disaster and he was the only one to survive. He still missed them – his Commandos, Peggy, _Bucky_ (God, how he missed Bucky), even Howard, but this crazy group of misfits had somehow become his family.

 “If you’re going to sleep in here,” Steve said after a brief moment of consideration, “I’d prefer it if someone keeps watch. The colony won’t hurt you, but it does get curious.” He didn’t add that his teammates also got curious, but he gave Tony a long look. Tony just smiled at him.

“What’s it like?” Clint asked with undisguised curiosity, which didn’t serve to make Steve any more comfortable. Tony had changed tactics from trying to move him to simply crowding Clint on the narrow cot. Clint didn’t seem to mind the crowding in the least. He’d turned onto his side so that Tony was curled up neatly behind him.

“Yeah, Cap, does it cuddle you afterward?” Tony put in, propping himself up on one elbow. Steve gave him a withering look and Clint elbowed him in the ribs. Tony rubbed at his side and used his shoulder to nudge Clint in return. “Like you don’t want to know.”

“I can’t really explain what it’s like,” Steve said, ignoring Tony and his too-knowing eyes. The others might be happy to be fooled, but he was suddenly sure that Tony had figured out what Steve had allowed to happen. “It’s so strong. It feels strange to me, being so…” Steve shifted uncomfortably and looked away. “Weak again. In comparison, I mean,” he added too quickly when something in his tone got the attention of the rest of the team. For a moment he was so astonished that he’d said it out loud that he just stared at them like a rabbit facing a coyote.

Maybe sensing his discomfort, the tentacle around his waist tightened and several others reached to wrap around him. They pulled him slowly back towards the safety of the main mass, and he let them.

“That is so weird,” Tony muttered, watching him go. His eyes were full of a suspicious calculation that Steve really didn’t like, but he couldn’t nail down exactly _why_ he didn’t like it enough to put it into an order.

“Do you think it would pick me up?” Clint asked, eyeing the tentacles speculatively.

“Don’t even think about it, Barton,” Steve said sharply, trying to point at him for emphasis, but a tentacle reached up and pulled his wrist down as soon as he’d lifted his arm. “It’s plenty enough that I’m…” What? He wasn’t really being held _captive_ except in the most literal sense. He was positive that he could make the colony let him go if he made enough of an issue about it, but he _was_ at least out of commission while he essentially played ambassador. “We don’t need two of us compromised.”

“You’re just selfishly hoarding all the fun,” Clint complained.

Tony made a noise of mock outrage. “Mr. Barton! To think none of us ever knew about this sick kink of yours. Very unbecoming for a superhero. Children look up to you. For shame.”

“I knew,” Natasha commented evenly.

“Traitor,” Clint groused.

Natasha paused in her painting to give Clint a pointed look. “I could have told them about-”

“Nothing! There’s nothing else you could have told them about!” Clint cut off, a note of something like panic coloring his voice. Steve caught Natasha’s eye and gave her a grateful smile, which she returned with a bare twitch of her lips. The team’s attention successfully diverted, Steve relaxed into the grip of the colony, and made no protest when it pulled him inside.

 _Cold,_ the colony said in mild admonishment. It wrapped him up in gentle coils, tight enough that he felt secure, loose enough that he could move a little. He shifted until he felt comfortable and laughed when the stuffed panda appeared through the coils. The tentacle snuggled it up against his stomach and he obligingly wrapped a hand around it. He’d given up sleeping with his teddy bear when he was very young, wanting desperately to grow up faster and seeing the stuffed toy as something holding him back. His grandmother had made it for him shortly before she’d passed away, and Steve still missed it sometimes. Pillows arrived shortly after, and one of the injured tentacles was moved up against his throat. He unthinkingly pet the limb, which pulsed dull red under his fingers.

 _Are you healing?_ He asked, doing his best to determine how badly the slender tentacle was injured.

 _Damaged,_ it said mournfully, but implied that it was healing the injury, and didn’t seem concerned over the possible death of the limb.

Just as he was drifting off to sleep, his earpiece chimed at him. He dropped onto his back in the coils of tentacles and sighed heavily. It would be easy to ignore it – he was completely concealed from view by layers upon layers of overprotective tentacles. He could just close his eyes and go to sleep and no one would be any the wiser. If it had been important, whoever wanted his attention would have just said something rather than pinging him.

Groaning, Steve reached up and tapped the earpiece. “Rogers here.”

“Captain!” Thor said, a little too loudly, obviously annoyed. “Dr. Banner contacted me earlier to inform me of the situation, and I have arrived at your location. Inform the guards to move.”

Thor did his best to be polite, but aside from being physically stronger than just about anyone he encountered on a daily basis, he’d had a few thousand years of getting his way to inform his behavior and the few months he’d spent on Earth couldn’t override a lifetime of positive reinforcement. Steve had to pick his battles when it came to Thor even more so than with Tony. He was honestly impressed that Thor hadn’t just moved the guards himself and forced his way into the room.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea, Thor,” Steve said. “The colony is very curious about new things, and you would definitely be new. I don’t know if it would be able to tell that you’re not human, but it might just grab you first and ask later.”

“I do not like to be held apart from my companions,” Thor said. To the guards outside the door, it probably sounded like an ominous rumble, but Steve had been around him long enough to recognize it as Thor-variety whining.

“I know, but the rest of the team has already been exposed and I don’t think we should introduce any more new faces at the moment. Just give us time to get settled and I promise you can join the rest of the team.”

Thor was quiet for a moment, but finally said, “I will defer to your judgment for the moment, Captain. Rest well.”

“Thank you, Thor. You too.”

Steve thumbed the communicator off, and fell to sleep almost immediately. If he dreamt at all, he didn’t remember it when he woke.

~*~

While he slept, the room had been made more comfortable for the colony. Thick rugs had been rolled out over much of the floor space, mismatched pieces of furniture had been scattered around the room for the Avengers, and what looked like an entire home goods store worth of pillows and blankets were stacked up in piles. The colony was already happily exploring the new textures when Steve convinced it to let him out so he could use the bathroom.

He didn’t realize he was still holding the stuffed panda until he saw Tony’s eyes following it from his place at a card table set just beyond the human line as Steve crossed the room to the bathroom. Steve tried to be as casual as possible about handing the soft toy back to the colony, but he knew he was blushing too hard to pull it off.

For a wonder, Tony didn’t mention it when Steve came back from the bathroom. “How’d you sleep, Cap?” he asked, head tilted to one side and smile firmly fastened in place.

“Fine.” Steve frowned, realizing for the first time that Tony hadn’t called him by name since the strange disaster began. He puzzled at it, trying to pinpoint why, and – more importantly – why it bothered him. He forced a smile of his own and asked, “You?”

“I kept watch mostly,” Tony said, eyes sliding away from Steve’s face to the tentacle still wrapped around his waist. “It never stops moving. I wonder why.”

From his tone, Steve could tell that it wasn’t really a question – he was just running his mouth as unconscious commentary to what was going on in his head. “It’s not a single entity,” Steve answered anyway. He shrugged one shoulder and let his fingertips trail over his tentacle-belt. “Lots to do, I guess.”

“Very efficient,” Tony said faintly. His eyes drifted around the colony before returning to Steve’s face. “What does it do to you in there?” he asked very softly, meeting Steve’s eyes and refusing to look away.

Steve knew that all he had to do was give Tony a few blinks and a shake of his head and Tony would set off on getting him free. He was strangely touched by it. “Cuddles, is the closest thing I can think of,” Steve reassured him with gentle force. “It’s not hurting me.”

Tony’s only answer was a noncommittal noise. Before Steve could figure out how to reassure him any further, the main door opened. He felt an abrupt tension in the colony as it took note of the change in the environment and turned its attention to investigating. It was an odd sensation, and Steve started to get a feeling of what function the individual tentacles played within the whole body. Some of the limbs completely ignored the door opening, but several others were tense with attention and ready for quick action. Steve wasn’t sure what that _quick action_ would be, but he had a sense that it wouldn’t work out in the favor of whoever was behind that door.

Steve stroked a hand down the tentacle wrapped around his hips and thought of a _shushing_ noise. _It’s okay,_ he tried to explain. A pale pink tentacle lifted up and nuzzled his cheek, but it was the same kind of pat he might give to an overeager dog. He flushed, laughing softly in response.

Fury stepped in a moment later with Coulson right behind him. A second card table had been set up near the door, and Fury gave the colony a spare glance before sweeping his coat out of the way and taking a seat. He said nothing, but stared at Steve with his visible eyebrow curved upwards, waiting for Steve to get the hint and join him. Or maybe he was waiting to see if the colony would _let_ Steve join him. Steve squared his shoulders and stepped firmly over the human line. The tentacle uncoiled to let him move, neither protesting him stepping over the line, nor drawing the limb away. It was a little like being on a retractable leash, and Steve didn’t think the parallel was missed by the sharp-eyed agents around him. He grabbed the plastic folding chair and turned it around so he could straddle it comfortably.

“Hello, sir,” he greeted with a nod.

“Captain Rogers.” Fury’s eyes flickered over the colony. “I understand you were able to get some information yesterday about where our new friend came from and what it’s doing here?”

Steve nodded and quickly related the story the colony had shown him the night before. He had to struggle to keep his voice clear of the deep sadness that he couldn’t readily explain, and did his best to make sure it didn’t show on his face.

“I read the report,” Fury said once Steve had finished the retelling, “But I thought I would come get your take on it in person. Anything else you can tell me about this creature?”

Lips pursed, Steve tilted his head and hoped it looked like he was thinking rather than he was annoyed at the colony being called _this creature_. He watched Fury carefully before answering, “The entire species is one giant colony that shares a telepathic link. This is a very, very, _very_ small portion of that colony. It has been separated from the greater colony and it’s…” Steve frowned down at the tentacle still wrapped around his waist. “It’s lonely.”

Fury returned Steve careful consideration. “Do you think that’s why it took you?”

Steve shook his head. “I think it took me because it saw me as a threat. It’s keeping me because it’s lonely and looking for connections. Once it realized that I was… an intelligent life form, and that I didn’t have a colony, it…”

“Thought you would appreciate the company?” Fury guessed. His eye shifted down to the tentacle wrapped around Steve’s waist. Steve realized he’d been absently stroking it and made himself stop. The limb, wreathed in happy golden lights, dimmed in disappointment.

Fury made a flicking gesture to the colony. “You indicated that these creatures are capable of space travel?”

Steve clenched his jaw to keep himself from saying something heated and unwise about Fury continuing to call the colony a _creature_. “Yes,” he answered, “They are actually capable of surviving in space in a large enough colony, though I’m not sure how they leave the planet or how they move in vacuum.”

“Biological propulsion,” Tony interrupted, helping himself to a seat. He had a can of cola in one hand and a bag of chips in the other. He popped a chip into his mouth and crunched it noisily. “Pretty interesting stuff.”

Fury glared at him, but Tony blithely decided not to notice how unwelcome he was as far as Fury was concerned. Steve was happy to have him there, and felt his shoulders relaxing, his spine curving into a more comfortable sitting position.

“Uh-huh,” Fury said dryly. He gave up trying to glare Tony out of his seat and turned his attention back to Steve. “Just out of theoretical curiosity, what would happen if were unable to return the creature to its… colony?”

Steve wanted to give Fury the benefit of the doubt, and there was a valid question in there - how would the colony react if it was impossible to get it back home?  But he caught onto the darker meaning of the question quickly. Before the serum, before he’d become a weapon and a political pawn himself, he would never have believed that his government would be willing to hold an intelligent being in captivity just to study it. Of course, then he’d become one such being in captivity.

“Every member of the colony is connected, sir,” Steve said with his eyes narrowed and his jaw clenched. “We don’t have a number large enough to express how many individuals are in the main colony, and each one is of equal importance to the whole. They will eventually come for this subcolony, and we can either be the friendly aliens who did our very best to get it home, or the hostile aliens who tortured and experimented on it –”

“Now hold on –!” Fury protested, shifting forward in his chair with a an angry twist to his lips, but Steve ran right over him.

“–And they will either extend friendship to us, or trillions upon trillions of these colonies will cover the earth looking for their lost member. I, personally, would rather be on the friendly side.”

Fury stared at him coolly, but Steve didn’t back down. He was not going to let the colony disappear into the bowels of SHIELD’s laboratories to be dissected and prodded and studied. At Steve’s side, Tony made deliberately crunching his chips and slurping his soda into an art form. He and Tony fought a lot, but it felt good to be able to present a united front, to know that no matter what he said or did, Tony would have his back. 

“What can we do to help?” Fury asked finally, with a brief nod to Steve to surrender the point. He knew from experience that Steve wasn’t going to step down when it was a matter of right and wrong, and Steve hoped he understood that Steve was right – at least strategically, whether or not he believed it morally. Steve didn’t think there would be any grudges held for it, and he suspected that Fury had known the answer before he’d even sat down to ask the question.

“I need a whiteboard,” Steve said. He forced himself to relax once he realized that the colony was responding to his agitation by rippling around him like it had done with the injured tentacles in the safe next.

Fury hiked a curious eyebrow at him, but he nodded. “Agent Coulson will get you whatever you need. By the way, I have an annoyed Avenger with a big hammer haunting my halls. Apparently you refused to let him in the room?”

Steve nodded. “I’d like to keep the variables down to as few as possible, and an electric non-human alien to explore might be too much to resist.”

Fury gave him a skeptical look. “It’s your show, Captain,” he said finally. He stood, took one last look at the surprisingly endearing sight of a tangle of tentacles playing with the pillows, and left.

Tony downed the rest of his cola and set it aside. “Good call, Cap,” he said quietly.

Steve nodded in gratitude, and turned around to see Clint standing behind the human line with a metallic ball in hand. Clint twisted the ball between his hands and it lit up with strobing blue and gold lights. As one mass, the colony focused its attention on Clint, leaving pillows and blankets in their piles and forming up into a loose sphere, ends pointed attentively at the ball. Clint tossed the toy a few times, grinning devilishly when several tentacles followed the motion like eager puppies. Clint tossed it underhanded, and a pair of tentacles snatched it out of the air, quickly dragging it out of sight.

 _Throw it back to him,_ Steve suggested. _Gently,_ he added.

The colony hesitated, enamored with its prize and reluctant to give it up. Steve could sense the tentacles twisting the ball around while it examined the mechanism.

 _He’ll give it back to you,_ Steve promised, _Try it._

Reluctantly, the colony flicked the ball back at Clint, who caught it mostly with his stomach. He stumbled back from the human line with a _woof_ of expelled breath.

 _Gently,_ Steve admonished again.

 _Pain?_ the colony asked.

 _It’s okay,_ Steve said reassuringly, _Just be careful._

Clint straightened up, laughing, and tossed the ball again. He was better prepared for the next return throw, but still ended up shaking out a stinging hand. Steve watched the odd game of catch until the whiteboard arrived. It was a freestanding wooden structure on wheels with two writing surfaces and a box of Expo markers on the ledge along with a bottle of cleaner and a microfiber cloth. As he got the whiteboard arranged on the colony side of the line, he did his best to ignore Tony’s intense stare and unusual silence. Bruce was also watching him with unnerving attention. Steve knew that he would be having a lot of uncomfortable conversations once it was all said and done, and resolved not to worry about it until it was time to face the music.

When Steve uncapped the black marker, a portion of the colony’s attention peeled away from the game of catch. Half a dozen tentacles as big around as a dinner plates coiled around his feet and prodded at the whiteboard curiously.

“Yesterday the colony told me that it needed ‘logic’ to get home,” Steve explained to Tony, who was standing at the very edge of the human line watching the whiteboard with his arms crossed over his chest. “I’ve been trying to figure it out, and I think it means math.”

Tony blinked. “Math? What kind of math? Show me.” He made an impatient gesture with both hands and stepped over the line. Several tentacles curved up toward him immediately. Tony turned his palms over in a dismissive sort of apology and stepped back before Steve could say anything. The tentacles drooped in disappointment and turned back to their toys and pillows.

Leaning around the whiteboard to give Tony a level look, Steve said, “I’m trying. Go somewhere else while I figure this out.” He realized his mistake right away – Tony was curious and being restrained, and he wasn’t going anywhere until his curiosity had been sated.

“You realize,” Bruce interjected smoothly, sidling up next to Tony, “That even if you are able to duplicate the colony’s math, it might take us months, or even years to understand it?”

Tony snorted. “It hasn’t taken me months to understand math since I was like… three.”

Both of Steve’s eyebrows went up, but he didn’t think Tony was exaggerating. Steve tried to fathom a three year old doing complex math, but all he could picture was the kids in the tenement he’d grown up in, making mud pies in the lot.

“Yes,” Bruce agreed, “But that was using numbers and symbols that you already understood. We’re going to have to translate the symbols before we can even begin to understand the nature of the math.”

“I’m working on it, guys,” Steve said with forced patience. He caught himself stroking the tentacle still wrapped around his waist with the hand holding the pen, and pulled away before he inadvertently drew on the limb. “I’m not going to be to do that if you’re over here distracting me.”

“You’re going to translate alien math? Where did that skill set come from and why have you never told me that you’re a xenomathmatician? Or any kind of mathematician? That seems like something I should know – have you just been being lazy all this time, making me and Bruce do the math for you?” Tony demanded, again, completely serious. At least, Steve was almost positive that he was completely serious. Sometimes it was hard to tell with Tony.

Steve huffed out a sigh. “I have an eidetic memory, Tony,” Steve reminded him. Most people forgot or overlooked the things the serum had done to his mind in favor of what had been done to his body. He’d always had a good memory, and a good head for tactics, but the serum had made everything clear and sharp, even when he wished the memories would fade. “So, the colony is going to use my memory of your math to translate. Feel better?”

“Surprisingly, yes.” Tony preened, hip checking Bruce and giving him a smug smile. He made a grand gesture to the board and said, “Carry on.”

Steve thought about pointing out that Tony was still hovering over his shoulder, but decided not to – Tony’s response would just as likely be to climb _onto_ his shoulders as to step away. Instead, Steve grabbed the board and turned it so it faced away from his teammates.

“Well that’s not very good teamwork,” Tony complained. He looked like he was ready to step over the line again, but Bruce pulled him back with an apologetic smile for Steve.

~*~

Nearly six hours later, Steve surfaced from a fugue of writing to realize that the colony had started to go very still and very quiet. Most of the tentacles had pulled into a protective ball over the previous hour, and it moved only sluggishly. Steve reached out in concern, but it took several of minutes of being miserably told, _light tastes bad_ to figure out the problem.

“Agent Coulson!” Steve called, capping his pen and patting his tentacle leash comfortingly. He felt a gnawing sense of worry tugging at his chest, and only hoped that they hadn’t hurt the colony permanently.

“Yes, Captain?” Coulson answered immediately, stepping up to the human line. Like the Avenger’s team, Coulson had been inside the room for most of the day, only stepping out once to meet with Fury. He took his position as liaison very seriously, and that was fine because Steve considered him a member of the team anyway.

“Can we get some full spectrum UV lights down here, please?”

To Coulson’s credit, he didn’t even bat an eyelash, just made the call. It was Clint who asked why while the rest of the team listened in for the answer.

“I think the colony photosynthesizes for energy and the fluorescent lights are not doing the job,” Steve explained, drifting over to the main mass to run his hands over the tentacles. They felt cold and their color had faded so much that some of them were nearly white.

“Huh,” Clint said, “I thought it was just getting sleepy.”

“Very efficient,” Tony remarked. He was sitting just on the other side of the line a few yards from Steve and the whiteboard, rolling the glowing ball back and forth with one small tendril that was curled loosely around the whiteboard’s stand. Steve marveled that it and the tentacle still around his waist staying out to entertain them when the rest of the colony had retreated to conserve energy.

The first UV lights arrived inside of ten minutes and Steve helped set them along one wall. Ever curious, the colony unfurled slowly to explore. Rather than lifting up and prodding at the lights, three tentacles snaked out of the mass, moved along the floor to Steve’s feet, and used him as a climbing post to get up to the lights.

 _Taste better?_ he asked, running the back of his hand over one of the larger tentacles that was poking at the light fixture.

 _Tastes purple,_ it responded.

Steve didn’t have the faintest idea how to interpret that, other than it didn’t seem like a bad thing, so he gave Coulson a thumbs up. The Agent passed him another standing light fixture with the cord spiraled around its pole and nodded.

“We’ll get the overhead lights in the back portion of the room replaced,” Coulson said. “And we’ll have another five of these here in the next thirty minutes.”

“Thank you,” Steve said, sitting down the tentacles while they bathed in the light. The rest of the colony was making slow progress over the wall, but the tentacles started to regain their color even as he watched. Steve stayed with them until the rest of the lights had been set up and the colony had warmed up and started to move again before going back to the whiteboard. He still had some alien symbols on the board that he kept writing by accident and had to go back to fix. Tony had given up asking direct questions about an hour before and instead just kept up a running dialogue with Jarvis, allegedly working out a very important math problem of his own.

“I’m not going to get curious enough to ask about the problem, Tony,” Steve told him as he erased a symbol comprised of five concentric half circles with a single line bisected it an angle, and replaced it in tiny cramped writing so he didn’t have to erase everything after it and start over.

“Like any xenomathematician wouldn’t be fascinated by my conversation? I know you’re burning with curiosity,” Tony said, rolling the ball back again. Even less than hour under the light had worked wonders on the colony, and it was already spreading back out, Tony’s playmate reacting faster each time the ball was rolled over to it.

“I’m not a xenomathematician,” Steve persisted. On the opposite side of the room, Clint and Natasha were playing hacky-sack with an intensely interested colony, and Steve was momentarily distracted watching them kick a green, black, and yellow ball back and forth with tentacles waiting excitedly for their turn.

“This right here?” Tony said, making a lazy gesture to the room, “This whole thing we’re doing right now? This makes you a xenomathematician. Probably the first one in the history of ever. Congratulations. If it weren’t so classified that the classified stamp needs three keys and a retinal scan just to ink it, you would probably win a Fields Medal for it. Which is good, because I would be really upset if you won a Fields Medal before me.”  

Steve let Tony’s chatter flow over him. He was running out of room on his side of the whiteboard and would need the backside and then another five or six boards to complete the one equation, but he finally got to the end of the available space, squeezed in the last two numbers sideways, and capped the pen. Tony apparently had some kind of special trigger set up for the pen capping sound, because he leapt immediately to his feet and made an impatient grabby-hands gesture.

“Let me see it,” he demanded.

“It’s not finished,” Steve said, unaccountably nervous for Tony to see his work, even if it was just a translation. This was Tony’s realm of expertise, and Steve only barely understood what was on the board. It could be just gibberish and Tony would laugh when he saw it after all the fuss.

“It’s not the Sistine Chapel ceiling, turn it around,” Tony whined. “C’mon. I bet if you turn it around, I can finish it before you can.”

Normally, Steve would have agreed, but considering how complex and… well, _alien_ it was, Steve somehow doubted it.

 _Are you feeling better?_ he asked the colony before he moved any further, letting Tony pace and stew in his impatience. The colony hummed pleasantly behind him, squeezing him gently around the waist. It was already spread out over most of the space once more, several tentacles pressing up within inches of the human line, and one with its tip resting right on the edge directly across from Coulson.

 _Don’t grab anyone,_ Steve reminded it as the tentacle wiggled at Coulson like a kid shaking their ass at a parent, daring them do something about it.

 _Individuals_ , it said by way of agreement, infusing something like an indulgent eye-roll into the statement.

“This is payback for the hentai comment, isn’t it?” Tony asked, dragging Steve’s mind back to the concrete room. He was standing with the tips of his shoes on the yellow line himself, his face set in an annoyed glare and fingers drumming on the sides of his legs.

Steve considered it. It _hadn’t been_ payback for the hentai comment, but he could _make_ it payback for the hentai comment. He eyed Tony consideringly, wondering what he could hold the whiteboard hostage for. He might be able to get Tony to agree to showing up to meetings in person rather than sending an empty Iron Man suit. As long as Tony was stuck on the opposite side of the line from the board, Steve could probably get just about anything in exchange.

“I wouldn’t,” Bruce advised as if reading Steve’s mind, “You know Tony and lines.”

Steve winced, but nodded with a chuckle, and Tony grinned. He rubbed his hands together greedily and made another gesture for the board. Steve turned it around and pushed it over to the line. He walked around it stand next to Tony, thoughtlessly trying to pick the tentacle up as if it were a vacuum cord. The tentacle flickered gold in amusement and slid further up his chest.

Both of the scientists went suspiciously quiet while they took the board in and Steve looked it over critically for any remaining alien symbols that had made it through editing. After nearly a full minute of heavy silence, Steve turned to see them both staring with their lips parted, eyes darting over the numbers and symbols.

“This is –”

“– My God, it’s so –”

“– Is that even…?”

“Yes! It’s right here. Can you believe –?”

Tony fell completely silent once more, looking over the equation with almost frantic energy while Bruce turned to give Steve a look of sheer astonishment. Steve felt an irrational urge to apologize or remind him that it wasn’t _Steve’s_ work, it was the colony’s, but before he could say a word, Bruce said, “This is the most elegant solution I’ve ever seen and you’re not even halfway done with it. I don’t even understand it. It’s… beautiful.”

“I just wrote it down like the colony showed me,” Steve mumbled, blushing hotly. If anyone other than Bruce had been staring at him like that, he would have thought it was a come on. “Tony –?” Steve stopped and turned around. “Tony? Tony!”

He whirled, hoping against hope that Tony had stepped into the bathroom, but a quick flash of movement on the other side of the board dashed his hopes. Tony had managed to slip silently around the board, and already had his shirt more than halfway undone.

“Tony!” Steve shouted again, tripping over his tentacle leash in his hurry to get back around the board.

Tony tore his undershirt over his head as he hurried toward the main body of the colony to reveal the bright blue glow of the arc reactor, announcing, “Hey! Look at the shiny! Come get it!”

Before Steve could get a clear order out to either Tony or the colony, the surrounding tentacles reached out and snatched Tony up like a snake taking a lame mouse. The room erupted in chaos, but Steve was yanked back into the colony before he could manage more than a breath of a protest.

“Tony? Steve?” Bruce asked, panicked, over the comms.

“I’m alright,” Steve replied automatically, not because he wasn’t panicking himself, but because responding wasn’t optional when a teammate called for a status check. What if the colony tried to remove the arc reactor? His stomach dropped and his blood turned to ice water in his arms. “Tony? Where are you?”

He heard a muffled noise over the line and guessed that the colony was busy exploring Tony’s mouth. Steve groaned, remembering what those first few minutes had been like. For all of Tony’s joking, he wasn’t sure anyone else would be entirely comfortable with the colony’s unique way of saying hello.

 _Be gentle!_ Steve pleaded with the colony.

 _Happy lights!!_ The colony trilled back, shivering all around him in unmistakable pleasure and excitement.

“Iron Man, respond!” Coulson ordered after several seconds of comparative silence.

 _Please move me to my colonymate,_ Steve requested, doing his best to stay calm. It was a testament to how fascinating the colony found Tony that it had left Steve’s arms and legs unencumbered. As soon as he’d drawn attention to himself the situation was quickly remedied and he was wrapped up and moved through the mass of tentacles to the nest. Tony was naked and trussed up like a Thanksgiving turkey with both arms pulled backwards toward his feet, and his legs drawn down and back toward his hands. His back was bowed at an enticingly artistic angle, and true to Steve’s prediction, he was struggling around the tentacle in his mouth, though he was breathing noisily through his nose. If the sight of it hadn’t stopped Steve’s heart dead in his chest, he would have ached for a sketchbook.

“I have eyes on Iron Man,” Steve said as calmly as he could to diffuse the tension in his teammates. _Remember that we need to breathe,_ Steve said to the colony, holding onto that same calm by his fingernails.

 _Happy lights,_ the colony responded. The whole dome of the nest was a mass of brilliant gold, dozens of little tentacles exploring the arc reactor while stronger tentacles moved him around for examination. Seeing it for the first time from the outside, Steve could understand why his teammates would hardly let him out of their sight. It was a terrifying thing to witness Tony being controlled so effectively; he looked fragile and helpless, and it made Steve burn with adrenalin that he couldn’t use.

 _Please release his mouth so I can talk to him_ , Steve requested. He’d started to shake in the grasp of the tentacles, and they rippled against him in a smooth roll to soothe him.

 _Pleasure,_ the colony sang. _Happy lights. Steve and colony are happy lights_.

Steve struggled uselessly against the broad limbs encircling his arms, growing quickly frustrated. _Yes, happy lights. I need to talk to him now, and then we can explore more happy lights,_ Steve pleaded. _Please. You’re scaring me_.

Fright wasn’t something they’d talked about. The colony worried over the concept. _Bad flash?_ it asked.

_Yes. Bad flash. Please release his mouth._

The glowing tentacle pulled out of Tony’s mouth and he sucked in a gasp of air, turning his head marginally toward Steve. His lips were swollen and slick, and he looked like every guilty fantasy Steve had ever entertained. The immediate comparison made him sick to his stomach.

“Are you okay?” Steve asked gently.

“Oh, fuck, yes. The not breathing thing was, for a second – but. Wow. You selfish dick.”

Steve blinked at him. That was not on the list of responses he’d been expecting, but since it was _Tony_ , maybe that should have been number one on the list of responses to expect. Steve thought up and discarded several questions before settling for, “Is it hurting you?”

“What?” Tony asked, baffled, and then, “No.”

“Okay…” Steve drew in a deep breath. “Why _exactly_ did you decide to go _exactly_ where I expressly said _none of you_ should go?” he demanded. Reassured that Tony was whole and unharmed, anger quickly rose to replace the fear. He could hear an expectant silence on the other end of the comm and knew that the rest of the team was waiting just as intently for Tony’s answer.

Tony gave him a sly smile. “Because your friend is a sexy, sexy beast. I wanted to see the logic.”

It was about the math. Tony had gotten himself pulled into a ball of alien tentacles for the math. Steve stared at him incredulously. Distantly, he could hear Coulson asking necessary questions, Clint cursing, Bruce trying to calm everyone down. He could feel the colony writhing against him, nearly incandescent with pleasure of the sound and feel of their voices in the nest.

“You are a menace,” was all Steve could manage.

Tony’s smile grew into an unrepentant grin. “I’m dropping off comms. The colony and me are going to spend some time saying hello,” Tony warned before, to Steve’s dismay, a tentacle lifted to Tony’s ear and delicately removed the communication device. The colony had examined Steve’s, but he’d sternly forbidden it from trying to remove it, and had asked it to stay out of his ears. Tony, apparently, had no such compunctions. A moment later, Steve felt his own getting wiggled loose.

_Wait -!_

_Lighten up, Cap. Relax,_ Tony suggested.

_…Tony?_

_You don’t have to sound so disapproving all the time, you know,_ Tony muttered, sounding genuinely hurt in a way he never did when he spoke out loud. Steve realized that Tony probably didn’t understand that he _wasn’t_ speaking out loud.

 _Tony, I haven’t said a word. You’re_ thinking _to me._ He expected a flash of embarrassment or shock, but Tony only blinked, eyebrows going up. Steve wasn’t sure why he still expected Tony to respond to anything like a normal person. He should just give up trying to predict Tony’s reactions to anything.

 _Telepathy,_ Tony said, obviously pleased, _Nice. I see what you mean about it not really being like speaking._

 _Steve colony is happy lights,_ the colony interjected, shifting them around in the nest so they lay more-or-less should to shoulder.

 _This is Tony,_ Steve corrected.

 _This is… Steve colony?_ The colony had only barely wrapped its consciousness around an individual who wasn’t connected to the whole of its race, had just grasped the idea that there were individuals who could have a connection to one another without being inside each other’s heads. The idea that two individuals in the same ‘colony,’ as Steve had explained the team, would have separate designations was apparently even more difficult to reconcile.

“You claimed me?” Tony asked flippantly, but he sounded pleased in a smug kind of way.

“I claimed you all. It was the only way I could explain.” Steve clenched his jaw and tried to lie still while the colony took up its usual pastime of petting him while it processed new and radically different concepts.

“I think Clint’s right,” Tony mused. “You just didn’t want to share.”

Steve snorted. “Only _you_ would think it was selfish of me not to share being an alien’s teddy bear. You and, apparently, Clint.”

Tony opened his mouth to retort, but then jerked in surprise, his response turning into a short gasp. “Getting a little – ah! – frisky, there.”

Steve started to laugh while Tony squirmed in the colony’s grasp. Somehow, it felt like payback. “If you ask it to stop, it will,” he said, because there was karmic payback, and then there was cruelty and Steve wasn’t going to cross the line, no matter how annoyed he was with his teammate.

“Stop?” Tony sputtered, “This is like being in the middle of an orgy of massage therapists. I can’t even think of a real scenario that could account for the logistics of so many – nngh – hands in all the … places.” He closed his eyes in pleasure, mouth open in a long, low moan, apparently giving up on the running commentary.

Steve was grateful for Tony’s closed eyes as he shifted restlessly in his tentacle restraints. He cleared his throat and repeated, “Menace.”

He lay still and let the colony continue its offhanded exploration while Tony arched and gasped, and made the loveliest sounds only inches away. It was a peculiar exercise in patience not to scream, or demand to at least be rolled over. He bit his lip and started counting backwards to keep from inadvertently making the request.

 _Tony_ , the colony said with firm triumph before Steve had made it to thirty. _Tony is Steve colony. Colony keeps Steve warm. Colony keeps Tony warm._

For all the strangeness of the situation, the statement made so much sense to Steve just then that he didn’t have a single word available to make a response. No response was necessary – it was just truth.

Attention no longer diverted, the colony focused in on the two humans among them. _Connection,_ it hummed. _Pleasure._

“Oh…” Steve practically whined. His pulse kicked up and he found himself trying to draw away. It wasn’t something he wanted to do with Tony next to him. Which was a lie – it was _exactly_ something he wanted to do with Tony, but preferably in a bed with the door closed, and not because a giant tangle of tentacles didn’t understand social niceties or what a little _connection_ and _pleasure_ could do to their friendship.

“What?” Tony asked, but didn’t get any further before the wide tentacle supporting his back levered him up and twisted him around. Steve watched with helpless eyes, and for some reason he still couldn’t make himself call the colony off. The colony knew Steve’s body well by that point, and quickly brought him up into a comfortable lean that it offset by dragging his arms down to an almost uncomfortable angle. He gasped and arched into it, finding the pull of the muscles across his chest, the sensation of being restrained, and the knowledge of Tony’s eyes on him to be unexpectedly arousing. He flushed, embarrassed, but was bafflingly more turned on by the embarrassment. He wasn’t aware he’d had this particular kink, and didn’t know what to do with it except close his eyes against Tony’s intense gaze and struggle to part his legs. When a flat, broad tentacle wrapped around his erection, it was all he could do not explode on the spot.

“So fucking beautiful.”

Steve peeled his eyes open to see Tony looking down at him with an expression that crossed somewhere between sorrow and desire. The tentacles had Tony’s arms out, back bowed, chest exposed for a dozen hair-fine limbs to pet over his glowing arc reactor. His legs were lashed firmly together and a think blue tentacle spiraled around him from ankle to ribcage.

Tony laughed shortly and bowed his chin to his chest. “I was right to be jealous,” he muttered, his lips tugging into an uneasy smile.

Steve just barely heard him through the haze of arousal. He frowned, trying to scrape enough of his mind away from the delirious pleasure of being so thoroughly claimed to ask, “What?”

“You’re going to hate me forever for this, and I actually _am_ really sorry about that, but I want to touch you,” Tony confessed in a rush, arching and straining against the tentacles holding him immobile. “I’ve wanted you for so damn long.”

Mouth falling slackly open, Steve breathed out, “Tony…” but couldn’t figure out how to get any further.

“Sorry,” Tony groaned, the apology turning into a low moan of pleasure, eyes drifting shut.

 _Happy lights,_ the colony sang while they talked, _Pleasure._

 _Bring him to me,_ Steve ordered before he could regain his sanity, because having sex with Tony Stark, who was a member of his team, was an even worse idea than having sex with an alien. Having sex with Tony Stark _and_ an alien just beat all, but if was going to lose his mind, he might as well go for broke.

Tony’s eyes popped open and he took in Steve’s expression in quick, hopeful sweeps. The colony was only too happy to oblige Steve’s request, and it shifted them around again so that Tony fit into the cradle of Steve’s hips. Tony was feverishly hot against his skin, and the tentacles wrapping his body were almost icy in comparison. They both hissed in startled breaths, and Steve’s ended on a ragged moan that earned him a slender tentacle coiling around his throat.

“Tell me this is okay,” Tony babbled as another tentacle wound around his neck and petted across his cheek. “Tell me this is okay, because if it’s not okay, we’ll make it stop somehow and forget this ever happened, and just go back to –”

Tony was just close enough. Steve surged up to capture his mouth before he could talk them out of what was probably a monumentally bad idea. Tony whimpered against his lips and his tongue drove into Steve’s mouth, tasting of cherry chapstick, cloves, and an underlying note of coffee. Steve struggled to close his legs around Tony’s hips, fighting against restraints that he wasn’t going to break, and sucked hard on Tony’s bottom lip.

 _Connection. Pleasure. Happy, happy lights,_ the colony sang, flaring bright gold, so bright that Steve could see it through his closed eyelids.

The flat limb around his cock loosened just enough to pull Tony’s firmly against him. The slick slide of his flesh against Tony’s, and the knowledge that it was _Tony_ made him buck and push wanton sounds into the space between their lips. He broke away to gasp in air, and caught Tony’s wild eyes. If he’d felt that Tony’s gaze would burn his chest open before, it was nothing compared to the full force of his attention at that moment.

Steve threw his head back and didn’t complain when a thick tentacle prodded at his swollen lips. He turned into it and wrapped his lips around the rounded tip. The colony lit up like the New Year’s ball in Times Square, the gold turning to a pure, blinding white when Tony took another limb between his lips and sucked like his mouth had been made for it.

As much as he hated to lose the image, Steve had to close his eyes to block the bright light. He thrust against the sweet pressure of Tony’s cock against his, and the perfect rhythm of the tentacles squeezing around him. His orgasm didn’t build. It didn’t even simply explode as it had the day before. He hit a peak that sucked the air out of his lungs and cauterized him from his toes to his fingertips. He screamed helplessly against it, but it was primal, inexorable; it was crashing into the ocean a hundred miles an hour, plunging into water so cold that it burned for that split second before everything went white, and then black.

~*~

Waking up in the warm cocoon of the nest was not entirely unlike waking up from the ice. He felt heavy and his body both ached and felt weak. Despite having just been asleep, he was exhausted, but he also felt new somehow, alive.

“Hi.”

A ripple of lights arched over him, and the colony cuddled tighter against him. Tony lay facing him, propped up among pillows and blankets with the stuffed panda in between them. Steve blinked at him hazily and wondered for several seconds if he remembered how to talk. He was deliciously warm and felt more safe and comfortable than he had for a long time.

“Gave me a little scare there,” Tony prompted. From the way his eyebrows drew in, he was still worried.

“Sorry,” Steve said as soon as he could figure out how his tongue worked. A silly smile stretched across his face, and he took a moment to run his tongue over the roof of his mouth just to feel the ridges and folds.

 _Intense?_ the colony asked, but its voice was unmistakably smug.

 _Very intense,_ Steve answered.

 _I would have also accepted ‘mind blowing,’_ Tony put in, equally smug. He smiled wider and brighter than Steve had ever seen. It was a smile that changed the shape of his face, carved deep lines around his eyes and made them crinkle. It completely transformed him, made him seem younger.

“How long was I out?” Steve asked through a deep breath masquerading as a yawn. He spoke out loud partially because the colony liked his voice, and partially because he didn’t want the colony to realize that passing out during sex wasn’t exactly normal. He had a feeling that neither of them would leave the nest for hours if the colony thought they needed to be “fixed.”

“Not long,” Tony responded. He moved his arm in a liquid roll, and managed to get enough motion through his limbs to reach out to Steve even through the restraining coils of tentacles. He pressed a hand to Steve’s chest. The colony shifted them closer and intertwined their legs in ready approval.

“Did it make you more sensitive? The serum?” Tony asked after a few minutes of quiet touching, the entire colony pulsing with a soft golden glow all around them.

“Enhanced all five senses,” Steve confirmed. Despite everything, he blushed, then cleared his throat and looked away. “Immediately after the procedure, I could barely handle my clothing. I would get hard from the slightest shift of fabric.” He laughed uncomfortably. “It was worse than when I was a teenager.”

The smile Tony gave him in response was pure sex and mischief. “That is very important information. Thank you for that, Steve.”

“I’m going to regret that,” Steve noted with a groan, but it was the first time in days that Tony had said his name, and he loved the sound of it on Tony’s lips.

“Oh, yes,” Tony agreed. “Heaven forbid someone with bad intentions ever get into your bed. You’d spill every secret you know, and probably make some up just so you could spill them too.”

Steve rolled his eyes and did his best to suppress a smile. “I wouldn’t make any up.”

Tony snorted and twisted forward just enough to nuzzle into Steve’s collarbone. After a comfortable minute he asked, “Do I need to apologize for any of this? I feel like I need to apologize.”

Nodding, Steve said, “You need to apologize for disregarding orders. Again.”

“Sorry for disregarding orders,” Tony parroted dutifully, though not very convincingly.

“And you need to apologize for getting rid of the communicators,” Steve said, only just remembering the communicators himself. “Mostly to the rest of our team, who are probably very worried right now.”

“Sorry for ditching the comms,” Tony said. Judging by his wince, he probably hadn’t thought about how going incommunicado would worry the rest of the team, but Tony’s personal mantra seemed to be _better to ask forgiveness than permission_ , and he normally addressed people being concerned for his safety well after he’d done whatever stupid thing he’d planned. Tony cleared his throat after a beat and casually asked, “Anything else you want to throw in while I’m in an apologizing mood? You should take full advantage, because I’m not in this mood very often. My CEO is going to be so mad that she missed it. _You’re_ probably going to have to apologize to Pepper for taking up my whole quota of apologies for the –”

It had worked once before, so Steve stretched his neck out and sealed his mouth over Tony’s until he stopped talking. Apparently it took Tony’s brain a second to put a stop to his train of thought, because he continued to talk into Steve’s mouth for several seconds. His muffled words fade into a soft noise of contentment, and his flicked his tongue out to explore the inside corners of Steve’s lips.

The whole exchange was probably going down on the Freak Out Later list, but Steve was perfectly happy to bask in the literal glow of the colony and the warm pleasure of Tony’s mouth on his.


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter Four

Within hours of waking up with Tony in the nest, Steve couldn’t imagine what his life had been like before he had a ‘colony.’ It was baffling and wonderful, and they slotted together like they were always meant to be connected. Tony was also a far better candidate to talk “logic” with the colony than Steve, which might have been the only thing that saved them from being forcibly separated from the colony when SHIELD realized what had happened. Steve might have the eidetic memory that allowed the colony to translate the math through him, but Tony had a mind that could actually understand it. That the colony was as in love with Tony’s mind and Tony was with the colony’s mind didn’t hurt either.

The concrete room quickly turned into a study in textures, and SHIELD cycled in new furniture and toys almost daily. Steve suspected that some of the techs were bringing in stuffed animals from home just to see the colony flashing excitedly over them. The floors were layered in rugs and carpet remnants in a colorful mosaic that the colony rearranged day to day to its liking, the walls had been hung in tapestries and UV lights, and a veritable mountain of pillows migrated slowly around the room as the colony examined and distributed them. There was some pattern to the carefully positioned piles, but Steve hadn’t been able to determine what it was.

Steve’s job became keeping the colony entertained while Tony and Bruce worked, and the rest of the Avengers remained on their side of the line. Clint kept casting Tony pouting looks that made Steve extremely nervous – he couldn’t bring himself to say that he didn’t _want_ the rest of the team in his colony, but he wasn’t so far gone that he couldn’t see the security risk it presented and the possible solutions SHIELD might employ to fix the problem.

 _The knowledge in the colony could advance space travel, and medicine, and… everything by decades. Centuries,_ Tony told him one afternoon, three weeks into their new living arrangements. Tony had taken to telepathic communication like a duck to water. By silent agreement, they’d decided not to share that the colony’s telepathy had passed onto them. By simple omission, they maintained that they could each communicate with the colony, but not with each other.

 _Which is the reason we’re not going to let that phrase go down in any report,_ Steve reminded him.

 _Why do you think we’re talking about this in our heads?_ Tony retorted. The colony had grown accustomed to their two-sided conversations and frequent debates, though their first argument had sent the colony into such a panic that it had swooped them both up and refused to let them go for over six hours. The concerned colony had been positive that there had been some kind of disconnect between them, and it spent the hours trying to discover and repair the damage. The interlude had been more than pleasant for Steve, but they tried to do most of their bickering out loud to avoid making the colony nervous.

A SHIELD medic entered the room, and Tony took a deliberate step across the yellow line, shifting closer to the colony and dragging his holographic displays with him. Bruce was left mid-sentence with his hands open on empty air and glasses sliding down his nose.

“Or you could just walk away, I guess,” Bruce said, adjusting his glasses and then dropping his hands down by his side. He huffed out an annoyed breath and moved right up to the edge of the yellow line.

Steve shook his head and turned to meet the medic. She was new to him, tiny and fine-boned, but blithely unconcerned by the giant mass of tentacles Clint was trying to teach to juggle. She didn’t even flinch on seeing the broad, dark blue limb wrapped around Steve’s waist.

 _You’re going to have to come back over here anyways. You might as well get it over with,_ Steve commented to Tony while he shook the medic’s hand. She introduced herself as Marjorie and went through what had become a standard list of questions to determine whether he was suffering any adverse mental or psychological effects.

 _Busy_ , Tony responded in a sing-song.

 _Logic_ , the colony agreed. In their love of problem solving, Tony and the colony were a united front that even Steve’s best command voice couldn’t overcome. Steve was also positive that Tony had implied to the colony that the medics were trying to hurt him. The colony was always especially tense whenever one of the white coated techs were in the room, and was quick to pull either or both of them away at the first sign of any distress. Since Tony hated medical on principal, it didn’t usually take long for him to disappear into the nest.

“Last question, Captain,” Marjorie said, flipping the page on her clipboard. She gave him a smile and asked, “Do you or the alien intend any harm toward Earth or any of its inhabitants?”

“No,” Steve answered by rote and resisted the urge to joke with her over the question. He wasn’t sure what they thought they were accomplishing with any of the questions (“Do you still identify yourself as human? American? A man?”). If Steve had been mind-controlled by the colony, it would still be easy enough to give them the right answers.

“Thank you, Captain,” Marjorie said, and then flashed her penlight in his eyes to check his pupil response, and took his pulse. She stepped up to the line and called, “Mr. Stark, can you please step over the line?”

“Nope,” Tony said without looking away from his board. “In answer to your inane questions: no, no, yes, no, maybe, no, no, yes, yes… yes. Probably, no, none of your business, and not yet.”

Marjorie hiked an eyebrow, but recorded the answers, said, “Thank you, Mr. Stark.” She handed her stethoscope and penlight over to Steve. “I understand that you know how to use these?”

Steve blinked at her, nodded. Tony gave him a petulant look, but he stood still and let Steve listen to his heart and flash the light at his eyes. Steve kept his head down and tried not to show his alarm when he realized that he already knew what Tony’s heart rate was, along with how often he blinked and his SpO2 levels with the same easy recognition of where his own limbs were. He gave the medic a smile, wrote Tony’s pulse on her form and watched her go.

Tony stared after her for a few seconds after the door had closed, and then admitted, “That was almost impressive.”

“From where I’m sitting, that was nearly miraculous,” Bruce said.

Steve had to agree. The previous techs had all insisted on fighting with Tony to read each question and get an individual response, which usually ended up with the tech leaving in a huff with their jaw clenched and their hands curled into fists.

“Can you bring the board back over now that the scary medical tech is gone?” Bruce requested.

Tony sneered at him like a five-year old in a mood, and stubbornly stayed on his side of the line for another five minutes before wandering back over with his holographic displays following along like glowing ducklings.

 _You’re like a cat,_ Steve teased, _Everything has to be your idea._

 _Cat?_ the colony asked curiously, pale pink and green flickers running through the tentacles.

 _You’ve done it now,_ Tony said. He laughed out loud, which made the colony light up gold in response. _Cats are soft cuddly quadrupeds with tails and fur. They purr._

 _Purr,_ the colony rumbled. _Where is cat?_

 _There are no cats here,_ Steve rushed. He tried to imagine a cat’s reaction to being introduced to the colony, but he could see a flying ball of hissing fur and slashing claws as easily as adorable cuddling. _Sorry,_ he said when the colony visibly drooped with disappointment. Steve felt miserable with the colony’s disappointment flickering all around him, and resolved to at least ask for a stuffed cat toy.

“Afternoon,” Coulson greeted, diverting the colony’s attention away from the theoretical cats. He held the door open for their lunch to be wheeled in after him.

Clint clapped his hands together sharply, making the tentacle he’d been waving a long feather duster at jerk backwards. Clint swiped the feathers over the tentacle once more and then tossed it to the colony and leapt up to his feet. Nat beat him to the cart and stole his plastic bag of tacos along with her own sandwich.

Steve and Coulson watched Clint chasing Nat around the human half of the room with several tentacles arched up in the air to follow their progress. Coulson shook his head, but he couldn’t entirely hide the fond smile curling in the corners of his mouth. Coulson caught Steve examining him and cleared the expression away to his usual bland smile. He handed Steve a newspaper and looked over Tony’s floating blue notes like he understood what all the gibberish meant. For all Steve could tell, he might.

“How is this progressing?” he asked, making a small gesture that managed to encompass the entire room and the situation is represented.

“We should be able to open a test portal tomorrow evening, maybe Wednesday morning,” Bruce answered before Tony could get in any stalling tactics.

 _Bruce needs to be in on this telepathic thing, because giving realistic timelines like that is unacceptable,_ Tony complained. He poked Bruce with his pointer and got a weary look in return.

 _Tony…_ Steve warned.

 _Tony,_ the colony echoed, repeating his name just for the joy of it. _Clint, Natasha, Phil. Bruuuuuce._

Steve did his best to suppress a smile, but he wasn’t doing a good job of maintaining a stern presence. He turned back to Coulson to find himself on the receiving end of a thoughtful look, and quickly gestured to the front page of the paper. The celebrity of the week was splashed across the headlines, caught trying to knock over a convenience store, and then managing to escape just long enough to give the police a merry chase in her Ferrari. “Do people need attention that badly?” he asked, because it was both a diversion and legitimate question.

“Yes,” Tony answered before Coulson could formulate a reply, “Yes, people need lots of attention, and they come up with creative ways to get it. What are we talking about?”

“Nothing, go back to your logic,” Steve said, making a shooing motion with three fingers. Tony gave him a single finger in reply. Steve just barely resisted sticking his tongue out, and turned back to Coulson. “Any news that doesn’t involve celebrities with attention issues?”

“Director Fury has politely asked that you let Thor into the room. He’s been… restless.”

Steve shifted his weight and crossed his arms over his chest. “I still don’t think that’s a good idea. If he shows one tiny spark of electricity, the colony will scoop him up like an Aesir potato chip.”

Coulson’s bland smile almost cracked into a grin and he coughed into his curled fist to disguise it.

“Tis no reason that I should not be at the side of my companions,” Thor interrupted over the comms.

Steve gave Coulson a withering look, but the agent just shrugged and held his hands up as if he hadn’t engineered the whole conversation so Thor could get his two cents in. “Thor…” Steve tried.

“And it is a friendly creature. This we have seen.” Thor’s tone was at its most stubborn and Steve could imagine him so clearly with his arms crossed over his massive chest, glaring through the two-way mirror that might as well have just been a window.

Steve raked a hand over his face. “Fine,” he said, “But don’t complain if you end up with a tentacle leash.”

The last half of the sentence was delivered to Thor’s face, as he had apparently been waiting right outside the door. Steve gave Coulson another long look, which he bore with his usual unruffled smile.

“Greetings, Friend Colony!” Thor boomed, stopping right on the line and holding his arms out. The colony flickered excitedly in electric blue and white gold while several tentacles reared up to investigate the newest alien, weaving in barely contained anticipation. Thor didn’t seem interested in deterring them at all and stayed where he was with a broad smile on his face, fists on his hips.

 _Don’t grab him_ , Steve reminded the colony.

It flickered red-blue-pink-gold in frustration. _Steve colony?_

 _Yes,_ Steve admitted, holding a hand over his tentacle leash, _His name is Thor._

 _Thor,_ it thrummed and then repeated excitedly, _Thor!_

“I would much enjoy grappling with you!” Thor told the curious tentacles. He knelt so he was at eye-level with several of the limbs that had been examining his thighs and knees.

“Thor –” Steve said wearily; he loved all of his teammates, but Thor was even worse at impulse control than Clint or Tony, especially when he’d found something new.

“I will not, Captain,” Thor reassured him, “But such a being would sure make a formidable opponent.”

“This is going to end badly,” Steve muttered. Next to him, Coulson nodded.

~*~

It was like a train wreck in slow motion, and Steve couldn’t stop it. He watched as Tony casually turned off his communicator and then reached over and turned off Bruce’s. Steve couldn’t say anything out loud without alerting SHIELD that Tony had dropped off the grid and pulled Dr. Banner with him, and he didn’t want to make the colony worry by starting an argument in their heads. He had a sinking feeling about what Tony was doing, and was resigned to it when Tony proved him right.

“You should say hello to the colony before we send it home tomorrow,” Tony told Bruce casually. He was a master of keeping his eyes on his work and talking in such a way that it was hard to tell from observation when he’d changed the subject.

“Do you really think locking _me_ up inside a tiny space with grabby alien tentacles would be a good idea?” Bruce asked. His eyes flickered over to Steve and then back to his tablet. He wasn’t quite as good with the duplicity, and solved the issue by just keeping his head down and his shoulders to the camera.

Steve tensed where he sat between Clint and Thor while they played Halo. His omnipresent tentacle leash had shifted its hold so it could stay wrapped around Steve and explore the game controller at the same time. On his right, Thor pressed the buttons furiously, shouting in about a dozen languages while Clint effortlessly took shot after shot. He was sure Tony had picked the moment specifically to take advantage of the noise.

_Tony, what are you doing?_

_You know it’s a good idea._

_It’s a bad idea,_ Steve argued. _If you think people are afraid of him now, what do you think they’re going to say when he’s bonded to a telepathic tentacle alien?_

 _Afraid?_ the colony asked curiously. _Why?_

_Bruce has a very big, angry green rage monster under his skin. He’s glorious. You’re going to love him._

_Glorious,_ the colony repeated. Steve’s tentacle prodded him. _Green rage monster? Bruce is two colonies,_ it insisted, as it had been doing for the better part of three days, ever since Tony had “accidentally” brushed his tentacle leash up against Bruce’s arm.

 _Have you actually thought about this?_ Steve asked while he tried to figure out how to explain the Hulk to the colony. The colony probably _would_ love the Hulk, but Steve doubted that the Hulk would take as much of a shine to it.

Tony didn’t answer him. He just swayed slightly closer to Bruce and told him, “It can help you with that problem, you know.”

Bruce was quiet for several tense seconds. “It can cure me?”

 _Don’t give him false hope,_ Steve pleaded.

“No,” Tony reported dutifully, “But it says that you’re ‘two colonies’ and have a damaged connection. _That_ it can fix.”

Steve could all but feel Bruce’s disappointment. “What good does that do me? If they can’t get rid of the … _him_.”

Tony gave him a beautiful smile that Steve could feel through the connection between them as if it was his own. “Maybe no more uncontrolled smashing? Just smashing the things you want to smash?”

“Think we can teach the colony to play Halo?” Clint asked speculatively, pulling Steve’s attention away from the conversation behind him. He was watching the end of the tentacle where it was prodding at his controller while being careful not to touch Clint’s fingers.

Steve’s hand lifted automatically to pull the tentacle away, but he let it go. Clint didn’t mind, the colony wasn’t touching him at all, and Steve was losing the battle to keep his team away from the colony anyway. He shrugged. “I don’t know. It doesn’t really ‘see’ the way we do. Tony thinks it might sense the world a little like an earthworm.”

Thor seemed to take it as a personal challenge and reached across Steve’s lap to press one of Clint’s buttons. The tentacle jerked away from him at first, but then stabbed the same button. Clint shoved Thor’s hand away and took over pressing buttons again. The colony imitated each motion, bright gold sparks zipping over its skin as it got a handle on pressing buttons and flicking the joysticks. With a sideways glance at Steve, Clint reached out and ran his fingers over the tentacle’s skin in a quick caress that sent a wave of happy golden lights all the way down the tentacle and back to the main mass. Taking it as permission, the limb wrapped around Clint’s fingers.

“It’s so soft,” Clint said wonderingly, reaching out to run his fingers down the glowing tentacle.

Before Steve knew what was happening, he had Thor petting the tentacle at his waist, and Clint encouraging the end to wrap around his wrist. He gave up – he obviously had no control over anything going on in the room, and just had to hope that the colony was everything it seemed to be, or he was going to be responsible for the takeover of the human race.

 _C’mere_ , Tony called. Before Steve could even decide to get up, the tentacle released Clint’s hand, squeezed Steve more securely, and picked him up.

“Bye,” Clint called, taking Steve’s controller and waving. The tentacle waved back.

“Did we offend?” Thor asked Clint quietly.

Clint shrugged. “Who knows?”

 _This would be so handy in the lab,_ Tony observed, grinning devilishly as the colony helpfully delivered Steve right to Tony’s side.

 _No, Tony,_ Steve said firmly, because he was nearly sure that the subcolony would stay if Tony asked it to, even if staying meant never seeing its home world again, being isolated forever from the rest of the colony.

 _I know,_ Tony replied with a hint of hurt threading through the words that made Steve regret saying anything. _Believe it or not, I’m not actually that selfish. Bruce wants to talk to you_ , he explained as he reached over and thumbed Steve’s communicator off. He turned his own on to keep a monitor on the comm chatter and walked away to take Steve’s place on the couch. His pale green tentacle was only too happy to wrap around Clint’s wrist and accept Thor’s gentle pets. Steve shook his head fondly, but turned his attention to Bruce.

“Do you really think the colony can bridge the gap between me and… the Other Guy?” Bruce asked very softly, still working on the holographic boards that Tony had abandoned.

“I know it could,” Steve admitted reluctantly.

Bruce frowned at his expression. “But you don’t want it to?”

If it had been anyone else, it might have been some kind of accusation, but on Bruce it was only an observation. “I want you to think about it very carefully. Bruce… I am so compromised that I am no good on giving you advice. I _know_ that the colony could help you. I know that _I_ could help you for that matter. But I have no objectivity.”

Nodding thoughtfully, Bruce asked. “You trust the colony?”

“I do,” Steve said without hesitation. “Maybe more than is safe. I don’t think the colony is going to hurt anyone or initiate a mass takeover of the planet, but I could be wrong – because I think I _am_ the colony.” It was the first time he’d expressed the fear out loud, but every day he felt more and more that he was becoming less a part of the human race, and more a member of the colony. It was hard to hold onto objectivity when there was a growing fear in his chest that he would lose the connection when the colony left – he would lose Tony, and the team wouldn’t be able to connect to him the way the colony did. He would be alone, and he’d already been alone for too long.

“Thank you for being honest,” Bruce said after a long pause. He gave Steve a reassuring smile and reached up to turn his communicator back on. Steve did the same, and walked away, feeling tense and torn. On the couch, Tony had his arms spread out across the back with his tentacle wound up his chest and down his arm to play with Thor’s hair.  

~*~

Steve wasn’t surprised when he felt a third presence click into the place in his mind that was already filled with Tony and the colony. He did feel guilty about how overjoyed it made him feel when the colony thrummed, _Bruuuuuce._

 _Let him breathe,_ was all Steve managed to say. He didn’t even open his eyes as the dimensions of the nest shifted and Bruce rolled into the space between Steve and Tony. _Tell it to stop if it does anything you don’t like,_ he added to Bruce, who was quiet under the onslaught of new sensory feedback.

 _Happy lights,_ the colony insisted stubbornly, squeezing Steve half in admonishment and half in reassurance.

 _I suggest you just relax,_ Tony countered, _It’s one hell of a happy ending._

 _What is it doing…?_ Bruce asked hazily as the colony started shifting him around to take off his ‘fake skin.’ _Oh. Oooh._

Steve sank into the coils holding him tightly, and tried to decide how he would break the news to Coulson that a third member of his team had just become attached to an alien organism. He had a working draft in progression when the colony flared gold and green, bright enough that Steve could see the colors through his closed eyes.

 _Clint!_ The colony sang, and then immediately after a zing of electricity shot around the colony. _Lightnightflash! Shiny happy happy lights! Thor is happy lights!_

… _I have no words,_ Steve said, stunned.

 _Where are Nat and Phil?_ Tony asked, completely ignoring him. He struggled through the coils of tentacles so he could see Clint on Steve’s other side.

 _Did you_ organize _this?_ Steve demanded in a flash of anger. The loops of tentacles keeping him secure in the nest flexed and rolled in a strong undulation down his entire body, the colony’s equivalent of a soothing hand on the back.

 _I just gave them the option_ , Tony defended.

 _Because he’s not a selfish jerk keeping all the fun to himself,_ Clint teased. He nuzzled his face against a tentacle and added, _Nat’s not coming. She’s running interference for us with SHIELD and says that someone has to stay tentacle-free in case we all go crazy and she needs to kill us before we take over the planet. Phil’s staying on the outside with her._

 _That’s reassuring,_ Bruce put in drolly. _Please stop that,_ he requested politely and the tentacle exploring his genitals obligingly withdrew. _Thank you._

 _This_ is _a most friendly being,_ was Thor’s only observation as he tested his strength against the tentacles holding him down. The colony flickered gold and bright blue in a fast pattern that somehow approximated laughter as it buried him in limbs.

Steve groaned, fighting the calming influence of the tentacles squeezing him tightly, and the sheer joy of his teammates soothing aches in him that he hadn’t even realized had been there.

 _Steve is not happy lights?_  The colony asked worriedly, holding his team still while it puzzled through Steve’s mixed reaction. _Steve colony connection damaged,_ it explained, _Colony keeps Steve warm?_

 _You don’t have to be alone, Steve,_ Tony told him gently. _And it’s totally selfish on my part, anyways, because I am so okay with us not needing comms anymore._

 _You don’t know that this connection will last when the colony goes home,_ Steve pointed out. He didn’t want to mention that he was potentially traumatizing the rest of the team with a very unusual sexual experience just to satisfy his own curiosity, because he had the unnerving feeling that Tony had made the sex a selling point.

 _Home,_ the colony echoed. A somber blue glow infused the nest. _Steve colony comes home?_

 _Steve colony_ is _home,_ Steve reassured it quickly so it didn’t decide to kidnap them for their own good. He finally let the insistent massaging of the tentacles relax the tension out of his muscles. There wasn’t anything he could do anyways. The entire colony relaxed with him and Steve didn’t complain when he was moved to rest against Tony’s chest. The blue glow of the arc reactor was shades brighter than the deep blue of the colony’s sadness. It was a comforting blue, the blue of bright possibilities and safety, and home.

“Tell me you want this as much as I do,” Tony whispered against his throat.

“I do want this, and that’s what scares me,” Steve admitted.

Tony snaked an arm out of his tentacle wrap and ran his fingers over Steve’s skin. “We’ll get through this together then, alright? What could possibly go wrong with a whole superhero team being telepathically connected?”

Steve groaned. “Not helping.”

 _This is kind of the most fantastic orgy I’ve ever been in,_ Clint added.

 _Also not helping,_ Steve said, but the colony was so bright with pleasure that it was hard not to smile.

 _Steve colony is happy lights_ , the colony reported smugly.

~*~

In the glow of a late afternoon sun, Steve stood with his team, fully dressed for the first time in nearly a month. The colony had tentacles wrapped around their wrists and held them tightly against the main bulk of the colony, unwilling to let them stray as they fired up Tony’s newest toy – an interdimensional portal generator, God help them all.

Coulson stood removed from the group with Natasha at his side and a silently steaming Nick Fury standing as far was from the colony as he could politely get. The morning’s revelation of a newly formed telepathic link between his flagship response team had made him even more reluctant to let the colony go, irate that Steve and Tony had withheld the information, and further impressed upon the necessity of not getting on the colony’s bad side. He wasn’t just dealing with an alien of unknown abilities and strength, but also his own people standing beyond the human line with tentacles wrapped around their waists.

Uncaring of Fury or his machinations, the colony had been only too happy to participate in the 30% test firing in the morning, and then to follow the entire team outside for the final opening. The unassuming device on the rooftop of SHIELD headquarters was barely bigger than a football and looked like something off a movie set. It hummed to life as the colony deftly manipulated delicate controls that only it could decipher. Either unwilling or unable, the colony hadn’t explained how the device was activated, and it had done most the assembly itself. All Steve could see was a swarm of the finest of the tentacles exploring the metallic cylinder. It glowed the same bright blue as Tony’s reactor, and then flashed green and yellow in sequence. Steve suspected that Tony understood the device a lot better than he was letting on, but he was more than willing to let the fiction stand that Tony had just followed the plans and put it together under the direction of a being much smarter than even the great Anthony E. Stark.

 _Next time you are on Midgard_ , Thor told the colony as they waited, _We will spar. It will be great fun._

 _Colony will play,_ it agreed, picking Thor up just to prove that it could. He wrestled with a dozen of the tentacles while they waited for the portal to initialize.

 _Gonna miss you,_ Clint said, unabashedly nuzzling the tentacles wrapped around his throat. _Haven’t even taught you Halo yet._

 _Halo,_ the colony repeated in bewilderment.

 _Thank you,_ Bruce added earnestly. He’d been quiet since the unusual team meeting the night before, cautiously exploring the notion that he and the Hulk might be able to coexist as the colony assured him was possible now that the connection had been repaired.

The pitch of the device’s humming increased to a whine, went briefly silent, and then released a violent pulse of golden light twenty feet into the air. The portal it opened was elegant in comparison to the ugly gash Loki had torn in the New York sky. Beyond a gold curtain stretched a cerulean sky, and below that, a planet writhing with the tentacles of the colony. Steve glanced over at Fury and saw the man’s face take on a distinctly gray tone.

 _You are one sexy beast, and I love your logic_ , Tony praised, staring fixatedly at the portal. Steve reached out and took his hand to remind him that he was needed on Earth. If the colony offered one more time to take them with it, Tony just might go. Steve could feel the draw of so much knowledge, so much unexplored territory pulling at Tony’s heart. He felt a stab of guilt at keeping him from it, but there was no power on any planet that was going to tear Tony Stark away from him except Tony himself. Tony reached down into the gift bag he’d been mysteriously totting around all morning and produced a large stuffed cat. The colony snaked it out of his hands without a moment’s hesitation, stroking over its soft fur and tugging gently on its tail.

 _Cat,_ it said happily, and then, _Soft_. The progress of the toy into the nest could be traced in flickering gold lights as it disappeared among the tentacles.

The colony released them one-by-one, setting Thor down, unraveling from Clint’s neck and arms, slipping away from Bruce’s wrists. Tony held on briefly to the tentacle at his waist, but didn’t argue as it drew gently away until only Steve was left.

 _Steve is happy lights?_ The colony asked hopefully.

 _Steve is happy lights,_ Steve reassured it.

 _Come home,_ it implored one more time and Steve had to fight off the urge to say yes. Tony wanted to go – they all could. He could be away from all the things about Earth that disappointed him so much, all the pain and the politics. He wanted it so bad that it surprised a gasp out of him. Tony’s hand squeezed his and he smiled ruefully. He’d been expecting Tony to be the one to make a running leap for the portal.

He took a slow breath and patted the nearest tentacle. _Steve colony is home._

The colony pulsed with unhappy orange lights and wrapped tightly around him, pulling him once more against the main body before letting him go. He’d become so used to the tentacle around his waist that he stumbled half a step when it released him, off balance. He felt immediately alone and cold, and it was a painful, horrifying sensation.

 _Tony?_ he called into the place in his mind where his team had so recently taken up residence.

 _Still here,_ Tony soothed, but he sounded more distant than he had, the communication less instinctive. The colony moved around them, pausing briefly to offer an almost proprietary touch to Natasha and Phil, though it avoided Fury with enough deliberation that Steve realized he and Tony must have been more clearly announcing their distrust than he’d thought.

The team drew around him, and Steve watched his very unusual friend and, strange though it was, lover pulled itself through the portal. The device sputtered and sparked, overloading just as the last tentacle cleared the threshold. It made a warning noise, flashed red, and went silent. The golden portal vanished with a _pop_ and a shower of lights.


	5. Chapter 5

 

Epilogue

“So what you’re telling us,” Tony said with a wicked grin for the embarrassed SHIELD doctor tasked with giving them the full work up after their unusual experience, “Is that we’ve caught the best STD ever?”

Steve buried his face in his palms. Next to him, Bruce shifted uncomfortably, but Clint was grinning like a maniac.

The doctor gaped at him. She worked her mouth several times before saying, “I don’t see how ‘best’ is a –”

Tony counted off on his fingers, “Telepathy – cool. No warts – also cool. Perfectly healthy – pretty neat. Zero bad side effects whatsoever. So we got to have sex with a tentacle alien, got an STD to remember it by, and it’s actually in no way harmful.”

The doctor frowned at her file, but finally gave them a helpless shrug. “We can’t say if there will be any long term side effects, but as far as we can tell… yes. You’re all fine.”

“Why hasn’t my body rejected it?” Steve asked. He didn’t want to get rid of whatever chemical change was making the connection to his team possible, but he was curious. “I’ve been exposed to just about every disease known to man and nothing takes.”

The doctor shrugged again. “We can’t even identify what it is. It might be a genetic mutation and not a disease at all.”

“Is this something that we can pass on to others through sexual contact?” Steve asked before Tony could interject with anything else. He’d been remarkably quiet considering that they’d spent several weeks being poked and prodded by SHIELD doctors. Throughout the stressful process, they’d done their best to keep SHIELD in the dark as much as possible and Tony and Bruce had both kept whatever ideas or observations they had to themselves.

“We don’t know.” She looked harried and young. She hadn’t introduced herself, but her nametag said “Lisa” and it had the blue border that said she was new. Steve wondered if she’d drawn the short straw in having to explain exactly how much they didn’t know. “Because we can’t find whatever is causing the connection, we can’t begin to guess if it might be transmitted sexually.”

_It is_ , Clint supplied helpfully, his mental tone smug as a cat in the sun.

Steve tried to keep his expression neutral as the doctor continued on with more nonsense. _What did you do?_

_Just Natasha and Phil,_ Clint answered innocently.

_At the same time?_ Tony demanded with a combination of awe and shock coloring the question.

_Mmmm,_ was Clint’s only response, but there was no mistaking the smugness.

… _And you didn’t invite us?_ Tony asked mournfully.

_Couldn’t even wait twenty-four hours,_ Natasha grumbled into their shared headspace. Her mental voice was smoke and low lights with an undercurrent of mischief and laughter. It was so beautiful and so perfect that Steve had to fake a sneeze to explain the sudden prickle of tears at the corner of his eyes.

_I’m surprised he made it six,_ Phil added with a voice that was as steady as Steve would have expected, but twirled through with bright pops of color. Steve knew that he was three states away handling a crisis of Chitauri technology showing up in a sleepy farm town, and it was fascinating that his voice was just as strong and clear as anyone who was in the room with him.

_Hush_ , Steve interrupted before it come become sharing time. _I can’t concentrate, and I need to look like I’m not having a conversation with all of you behind SHIELD’s back._

_But we are not behind SHIELD,_ Thor pointed out blithely, _We are inside the building_.

_Wow, so much harder for you to get away with the ‘I’m an alien and I don’t understand your charming Midgardian customs’ when we’re inside your head_ , Tony teased. _You and Steve, both such trolls. I’m so proud._

Thor laughed aloud in the middle of the doctor’s very unamusing orders that they were to strictly limit their contact between each other, and not to engage in any kind of contact – sexual or otherwise – with anyone not already in their group. She looked startled by Thor’s outburst, but Tony slapped both hands on the table in a short rhythm before Lisa could ask what was so funny.

“Right!” Tony said, “So you don’t know anything about how an alien STD works. Shocking – really, we’re all shocked. We’ll keep you looped in, _promise_. Meanwhile, I’ve got months of boring board meetings to catch up on, so it’s been nice spending time with you folks, and I’m going to go.”

Lisa opened her mouth to protest, but Steve just gave her a kind smile and shook his head. The rest of the team stood to follow Tony out the door, leaving Steve alone with Lisa. “Sorry,” he offered, although he didn’t feel all that sorry and Lisa wasn’t fooled. “Do you need anything else?”

“No. There are no other tests we can think to run. Your team is healthy as far as we know, Captain, and for now you’re cleared for field work. But we’re going to be checking on you frequently and monitoring your communications for a while. Just as a precaution,” she reminded him, glancing back down to her file. “You said that the um… the telepathic connection is…?”

_So cute that they think they’re going to be able to spy on us in_ my _tower,_ Tony said from just outside the door.

“Much weaker since the colony left,” Steve answered dutifully, and didn’t even feel bad about the half-truth. Having a solid reputation for honesty came in handy when he needed to put a spin on the truth to protect his team – his colony. The connection _was_ weaker than it had been when the colony had been with them, but it was steadily getting stronger the more time they spent curled up together.

If someone had told him four months before that he would be spending most of his free time in a mostly-naked pile with his team, he would have been horrified. Now, with the colony-bond, cuddling on the living room floor was one of those simple pleasures that he looked forward to after a long day of being poked and prodded. And after two months of being _thoroughly_ poked and prodded, he was overjoyed to hear SHIELD finally admit that they had no answers and no reason to keep them grounded.

~*~

Despite Tony’s excuse about board meetings, Steve found him happily tinkering away in the workshop, DUM-E following along behind him like an overgrown puppy with severe separation anxiety while U and Butterfingers jostled to be at his other side, all three of them making happy mechanical sounds while Tony chatted with them like they were all speaking English.

“So what do you say we order a pizza or thirteen and have an orgy tonight?” Tony asked, deadpan, when he noticed Steve leaning against his workbench.

Steve pushed away from the workbench and gave U a pat as he stepped around the bots to Tony’s side. “Yes to the pizza, please don’t start orgies. You’re going to scare Bruce away.”

“He just needs to get used to being touched again,” Tony said dismissively. “Clint likes the orgies. Agent Agent _and_ Natasha. That’s courage.”

“Clint is much stranger and braver than I ever gave him credit for,” Steve agreed easily, “For that matter, so is Phil. Did you see that coming?”

“No!” Tony burst out, “Oh my god, I thought I was the only one who’d missed it. When did _that_ happen? Go, Agent, seriously, but wow.” He put his tools down and climbed over U to get to the other workspace, where he had blueprints projected in the air above the table.

Steve smiled and caught Tony’s hips as he passed by and tugged him into his body. “We haven’t had a chance to talk.”

“What do you mean?” Tony babbled, “We’ve done nothing _but_ talk for the last three months. I’ve done more talking in the last three months than I think I’ve done in the past three _years_. Have you ever heard me talk? That’s a _lot_.” He edged nervously backwards, leaning away when Steve pulled him back by his belt loops. “What could you possibly have to talk about we’ve, literally – as in correct use of the term, literally – been inside each other’s heads? Are,” he corrected, “Are inside each other heads.”

“I’m not breaking up with you, Tony,” Steve told him, smiling in amused fondness as the look of panic drained off Tony’s face.

“You’re not?”

“No.” Steve took a slow breath and kissed Tony gently, in case it was the last time he could. “But you can break up with me. This whole strange experience has been… weirder and better than expected. But I don’t expect you to –”

Tony stole his tactic and cut him off with an enthusiastic mouth on his. He pushed Steve against the workbench and rose up on his toes while pulling Steve down. He devoured Steve’s mouth, tongue and lips and teeth working to drive Steve insane. When Tony finally pulled back, they were both panting. Tony brought his hands up to frame Steve’s face.

“Through a very weird chain of events that will forever play in my head like an animated Japanese porno, I somehow have Captain America sleeping in my bed most nights. I’m pretty sure that the entire human race would kick me off the island if I was stupid enough to kick Steve Rogers out of my bed.” He trailed gentle kisses over Steve’s face and down his neck. “Not to mention _I_ would kick me off the island for that kind of stupidity. So, yes pizza, no orgies, but you and me are going to make a mess out of my obscenely large walk-in shower tonight. Sound good?”

Tony grinned, nearly (but unfortunately not literally) glowing with pleasure. Steve laughed and leaned down to rest his forehead on Tony’s shoulder. “Sounds good,” he agreed.

“In the future,” Tony noted, “You shouldn’t start conversations with any variation of _we need to talk_ if you’re not about to break up with someone. Seriously, you put my reactor into overdrive. It’s not good for my heart.”

_I promise, I will take better care of your heart,_ Steve said. “Tony is happy lights?” he asked softly.

“Tony is very happy lights,” he sing-songed as he stepped away. He turned Steve by his shoulders and gave him a firm smack on the ass. “Now, as much as I would love to rip all your clothes off and do nasty, nasty things to you right here in the workshop, stop distracting me. I’m busy inventing new math. Again. To explain how I’m about to revolutionize the energy industry.” He winked. “Again.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The original version of this story was written in 2014 over the course of about 2 days, and it was edited in 2017 over a few months.

**Author's Note:**

> Come say hi on Tumblr! http://lightshadowverisimilitude.tumblr.com/
> 
> Here's the post for the newest, shiniest version of the story: http://lightshadowverisimilitude.tumblr.com/post/159168350535/happy-lights-revised-with-13k-words-of-new#notes
> 
> I make it a point to respond to all my comments (even if it's just a quick thank you!) If you don't want/need a reply, feel free to include NRN (No Reply Needed) in your comment. I'd love to hear your thoughts either way!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Happy Lights Art](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4575612) by [ladyshadowdrake](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladyshadowdrake/pseuds/ladyshadowdrake)




End file.
